


Virtua

by Artemis_Day



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Loki is insane, Or Is he?, Prompt Fill, What will Jane discover?, psych ward au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-25
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-16 23:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1365925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Day/pseuds/Artemis_Day
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Psychologist Jane Foster can't imagine a stranger case than the one that's just been brought to her: an unknown man claiming to be the Norse God of Mischief, who seems to know more about her than he should.  Unlocking the mysteries of his mind will throw Jane's entire world out of line, as she must question what is real, and what is just a dream.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a fill for a prompt on the magic-n-science prompt blog on tumblr. I posted a few teasers to this story on my tumblr blog. The links can be found below, but you are not required to read them (they can be seen as an unofficial prologue to this story).
> 
> You'll see that this is a bit darker than my usual Lokane fic. Not that Lokane isn't kind of a dark ship already, but here it will be dark in a way I haven't explored before. I hope you'll enjoy it!
> 
> Teaser 1: http://iamartemisday.tumblr.com/post/75118018203/medlog-automatic-transcription-services-session  
> Teaser 2: http://iamartemisday.tumblr.com/post/78021721424/medlog-automatic-transcription-services-session  
> Teaser 3: http://iamartemisday.tumblr.com/post/78857813465/medlog-automatic-transcription-services-session

_Jane…_

_Jane…_

_Jane?  Hey, Jane?  Wake up._

“I said, wake up!”

Jane opened her eyes and spent a moment adjusting to white blindness.  In the following moments, she recognized the ‘blindness’ as a piece of paper stuck to her forehead.  It fluttered back onto her desk with the rest of the day’s inpatient forms, a tiny grease mark sat where her head had connected with it.  She had decided halfway through filing, and after reading the same line ten times in a row, that a ten minute nap might be a good idea.  Her last full night of sleep may have sometime last Tuesday.

Or was it last Thursday?

What day was it again?

The answer came to her before Jane could reach her phone, but she powered it on anyway.  The welcome screen- a stock photo of a blade of grass with a droplet of water on the tip- glowed brilliant and showed the time to be exactly fifteen minutes to five.  There had been a three in that four’s place last she checked.

Her ten minute nap had been more like an hour.

“Oh _God_.”

Jane brought her hands to her temples, rubbing soft circles to release the tightness.  She pushed her hair out of her face.   Her fingers caught on at least three knots that left her scalp burning.  She had to be such a mess right now.

“Someone’s working the late shift, I see.”

And there was just the person she needed to confirm it.  Jane flicked her eyes to her visitor.  Jet black hair tied back in a ponytail showed not a single strand out of place.  The precision of styling like this couldn’t leave any room for errors.  No why in hell Betty ever came out of a nap looking like Cousin Itt.

“I was just closing my eyes,” Jane said, resisting the urge to rub the sand out of them.  “I wasn’t really sleeping.”

“Tell that to the four messages I’ve left you in the past hour.”

Jane peered down at her phone, switching to mail and indeed finding a red number 4 over the inbox icon.  Jane clicked it off.  She’d deal with the messages once she was finished with the sender. 

Betty was a recent addition to Genial North psychiatric hospital, not that that meant anything.  ‘Recent’ for them was any time below two years of residency.  Genial North was a small facility.  Their lack of criminally dangerous patients and the large shadow cast by the world renowned teaching hospital fifty miles away kept them firmly in obscurity.  There had never been an escape attempt.  No huge disaster to put it on the evening news.  The majority of their inpatients were simple manic depressives or bipolar.  The so-called ‘worst’ (Jane refused to use that word to describe them) they had was a teenage girl with supposed multiple personalities, one whose dosage of anti-depressants was due to be increased, in light of the latest incident.

It meant that taking on new staff was rare.  Everyone was comfortable with mundane day by day.  A few sick days, a nice Christmas bonus, and a big screen TV in the employee lounge was all they needed to keep sane among the insane.  Transfers came only when another staff member retired.  Such is how they got Betty, and Jane couldn’t say that she minded the change or that she missed Betty’s predecessor.  Having another woman her age at work instead of a wheezing old man who never stopped calling her ‘June’ had made her life considerably easier.

“You looked pretty out of it,” Betty said on their way to the cafeteria.  If they hurried, they would make it on the tail end of lunchtime for salads and some mini-doughnuts.  “I almost didn’t want to wake you.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” said Jane.  “I dreamt I was a ballerina.  I danced a perfect show and got a standing ovation.”

“Sounds nice,” said Betty, with all the enthusiasm Jane had come to expect from her.  Betty had never been much for dream interpretation, or anything mystical and unexplained.  That sort of thing never sat well for a rational thinker.  Jane could relate, but dreams she’d always found to be a fascinating subject.

“You know, I used to want to be a ballerina.”  Jane was mostly talking to herself at this point.  “Back when I was five or six, long before I knew about all the training and the work outs and what it does to your feet.”

Jane shuddered, and then laughed at herself for it.  Betty didn’t share in the humor with her.  She didn’t seem to be on this planet as they took their trays to their usual table by the windows.  It was there that Betty put an end to the suspense.

“I’m sorry if I seem less than chatty today,” she said.  It struck Jane that Betty looked more tired than Jane had ever been.  “There have been some problems with one of my patients in the isolation ward.”

Jane gave a sympathetic wince.

“Is it the one who keeps trying to swallow the bath soap again?”

 “No, he’s been very good, lately.  It’s this old man I just got re-assigned to.  He suffers from delusions and possibly schizophrenia.  They’re still running tests.”  Betty stirred some sugar into her coffee.  “He asked for a switch himself, and I’m not sure why they granted his request, but I really wish they hadn’t.”

“Is he violent?”

“It’s not that he’s violent.  He’s just really… forward with me.”

Jane raised a questioning eyebrow.

“He thinks I’m his late wife,” Betty elaborated, rolling her eyes.  “Apparently, I’m a dead ringer for her when they were young.  She died thirty years ago in a car accident, and he’s convinced I’m her reincarnation.  He keeps asking me to help him escape so that we can run away together and renew our vows.  And when he’s not doing that, he’s asking his buddy, Father Gerard, to preside over the ceremony.”

“Father Gerard?”

“Like I said: possible schizophrenia.”

Betty took a long drink, and Jane was tempted to go and refill her cup for her when she was done.  She looked like she could really use it.

“I wonder how he was with his old therapist,” Jane said.

“You and me both,” said Betty.  “Remind me to bring that up to Dr. Tyler at the next staff meeting.”

She wound up having an extra cup after all.  She paid for it herself, against Jane’s offer to pick up the tab.  The lunch bell rang, calling for an end to everyone’s leisure time.  Patients were herded off to group therapy meetings.  Personnel dipped back into the steady flow of a normal workday.  It had a very high school feel to it, this setup.  It had Jane occasionally wanting to ‘cut class’ with Betty, and spend the whole day shopping for shoes. 

“So how are your patients?” Betty asked.  The halls were much busier now that everyone was fed and ready for work.  They had to practically yell to hear each other.

“They’re good,” Jane answered.  “Good as they’ve ever been.”

It was never easy for Jane to discuss her patients, even with her colleagues.  The confidentiality leash only went so far in explaining that.  That was the trouble with her, as her professors and former bosses liked to tell her en masse, she just got way too attached to these people. The fist-thick wad of folders she carried contained all the information for today’s rounds.  The top two were her favorite patients.  She wasn’t supposed to have favorites. 

Objectively, they were also the most important.  Ian Boothby and Darcy Lewis: young children just barely into their twenties, and in the eyes of some, already broken beyond repair.  Jane chose to take the higher road, as she did with all the patients before them, and as she would continue to do years after Ian and Darcy walked out of here, their scars faded, if never truly gone, and their minds free.  That was a day Jane Foster counted on, and no corporate puppets or insensitive board members with their thick wallets and expensive cigars were going to change that.

For now, she would contend with a doped up Darcy, playing guessing games to find out which of her ‘other sides’ was hanging around today, and an Ian so petrified of his own demons, that he’d spend the hour extolling Jane’s many virtues in personality and therapeutic technique, mixed it with questions about Darcy.  They were quite a pair, those two, always together at meals and in group therapy.  He was like a lovesick puppy, Ian.  He’d follow Darcy off a cliff if he had to.  For her part, she was aloof to his feelings, but it was clear that she enjoyed the attention, and so every now and then, she’d grace him with a smile or a ‘good work there, guy,’ just to make the boy’s day a little.  That was them on a good day.  Ian had yet to see Darcy on a bad day.  There was a very good reason for that.

“We’re upping Patient 061386’s Depakote again,” Jane said.

Betty furrowed her brow.  “You mean Darcy?  The one with the multiple personalities?”

“Assuming that really is what they are,” Jane said, checking the script one more time to make sure the new dosage was correct.  “Sometimes, I’m not so sure.”

“From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like it could be something else.”

“You haven’t met Darcy.  Her symptoms are really very inconsistent.”

They pass through the swinging double doors into the general psychiatric ward, an area of pure pastel white and the occasionally watercolor floral arrangement.   Doctors and personal run about in their soft shaded uniform work wear.  It had become a requirement last month for all hospital staff to refrain from wearing brash colors around the patients (especially bright red).  Something about not wanting to give them headaches or distress them; a new study conducted by that teaching hospital concluded this to be a legitimate concern for mental patients.  How they got a result like that and what made them even think to study it, Jane would never know. 

She and Betty showed ID badges to security, and were granted entry.  Their first stop was the pharmacist, where Jane dropped off the script, and then to the nurse’s station, where they received daily reports of last night’s activity.

“How inconsistent are we talking?” Betty asked, long after Jane had thought the conversation had died out and she was busy reading a complaint against one of her bipolar patients.

“It’s hard to explain,” Jane said after a beat.  “When she’s herself, she acts very much like a normal young woman, if a bit sharp-tongued.  But then she has moments where she’ll say something alluding to another personality, like… one of them she calls ‘Kat’ who is this very over-dramatic glamorous figure.  She’ll start talking like her in the middle of a conversation.  Her old therapist thought Kat was a reflection of some childhood dream to be an actress, or a personification of issues with her father abandoning the family for ‘bigger and better things.’  What’s bigger and better than a Hollywood actress was his logic.”

Betty hummed.  “Well, I know you’re not much for Freudian analysis.”

“I don’t hate the man’s work.  I just don’t think much of it is feasible, you know?  We’re moving past that.”  Jane accepted the files from the nurse when it was their turn in line, and waited behind for Betty to grab hers.  “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that Darcy tends to evoke traits of her other personalities, even when she is the one in control.  That, and she claims to black out when not in control and remember nothing, and yet she’ll recall things that happened during the time she says she was out.”

“That is suspicious,” Betty conceded.

Jane nodded. “I just don’t want to just call her a liar without first knowing all of the facts.  I’ve only been working with her for four months and I think she’s finally starting to trust me.  Who knows?  Maybe she really does have DID.  What we know is she’s bipolar, that’s obvious.  I’m trying to focus on that for now, and if I can ever make her feel comfortable talking to me and get her to take her meds regularly, then we can move forward with the rest.”

Betty whistled.  “I think I just lost my right to complain about patients forever.”

“I’m not complaining,” Jane insisted, for all the good it did to make Betty believe her.  “I don’t like saying it like that.”

She found herself unable to meet Betty’s eye.  The knowing that swirled thick in their depths had her feeling twice her size, and far too happy when that one out of breath orderly, who never seemed to get the meaning of ‘no running in the halls,’ skidded to a halt before them.

“S-sorry to bother you, D-Dr. Foster,” he panted.  “I have a message from Dr. S-Selvig.  He’d like to see you in Session Room 8 right away.”

He came to rest next to the bulletin board, ripping apart a flier for Arts and Crafts Thursdays in the patient lounge in his quest for traction.  It fluttered to the floor at Jane’s feet, atop her shoes with a feather-light touch.  Jane absently edged it off to the side for someone to pick up later. 

“Dr. Selvig wants to see me?”  She shifted her papers so they sat just a little lower to her waist.  “Did he tell you what for?”

“Something about a consultation, I think?” the orderly said, his face scrunched up like it hurt for him to remember.  “I just know he wants to see you whenever you have a minute free.”

He took off, leaving Jane wanting for information, but not needing to ask.  Setting her folders down, she fished out her schedule.  The afternoon times- all lined up in a neat little column- confirmed that she had thirty minutes before her first session with Ian. 

“Looks like I’ll be consulting today,” she said with a click of her tongue.  “Here I thought I’d have another thirty minutes to myself.”

“If nothing else, it’s bound to be fun,” said Betty with a pained expression on her face.  “I have to go and see my ‘husband’ again.  Wish me luck!”

**

Jane was in the elevator, watching the numbers plunge from double to single digits, when it hit her where Session Room 8 was located. 

The sliver of light through the doors blinked in and out of existence until she passed the first floor.  Pure darkness replaced it.  Jane had to close her eyes.  She’d always hated that about the basement floors.  The dim light, the sterile halls, the lack of active personal because most of them were as unnerved by the place as she was.  She’d never for the life of her understand how Erik could manage it, not just once, but for the last fifteen years of his life.  Lacking sunlight; surrounded by the absolute worst Genial North had to offer.  This was the place she had to fight tooth and nail to keep Darcy out of every other week.

The elevator dinged, and the doors slowly parted.  Jane half expected to see a line of escaped patients fumbling around like zombies, too far gone to know their freedom or what to do with it.  A gaunt faced nurse nodded at her from behind the welcome desk.  Her partner, a little more alive with her headphones firmly on and rock music blaring from the speakers, was too busy moving to the music to pay any mind to Jane.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Foster,” said an orderly wheeling a mail cart to the elevator.  He was going so fast that he was out of sight before Jane could answer.  She didn’t take it personally.

Erik was pacing when she found him.  A table covered in spreadsheets and police reports was the only piece of furniture in use.  Jane couldn’t even see a chair anywhere.  She shook her head and went to find one, before Erik worked himself into a heart attack, the way she’d feared he would ever since his age started to show.

She found two chairs shoved into a utility closet and made careful work of removing them.  One wrong move could have a mop handle cracking over her skull or a bottle of bleach turning the floors into a slip ‘n’ slide.

She put both chairs in place, the second one scraping against the tiles, causing Erik to jump.

“Jane!” he exclaimed, having just now realized he was no longer alone.  “Good to see you.”

Jane met his fatherly embrace and spent a fleeting moment enjoying the warmth of him.  It was such a needed contrast to the frigidity of this place.  Oftentimes, it felt like happiness was sucked away down here along with the heat.

“I can’t thank you enough for taking the time to meet with me,” Erik said.

“It’s no big deal,” she answered.  “I had some free time on my hands that would’ve been wasted otherwise.”

“Well, we can’t have that, can we?”  Erik pulled up a chair, and seemed very appreciative of her getting it for him.

“No sir, we can’t.”

Erik gathered together his papers, establishing a hasty sort of order to them with one pile bigger papers and one pile small.  Jane took a quick glance at both.  The smaller one provided nothing but Erik’s abysmal scribbly handwriting (whoever first made that comment about doctor’s handwriting had to be talking specifically about Erik).  The other was a little more helpful.  It was a letter addressed to Erik from the chief of police, expressing concern over the transport of a certain ‘package’.   Jane didn’t pretend not to know what that meant.

“So, on to business,” said Erik, lacing his fingers together.  “Well, I won’t dance around the issue.  Jane, I need your help with a case.”

“I figured,” Jane said, with a trace of a chuckle in her voice.

“But this is a very special case,” Erik went on. 

He lifted the big pile onto its side, allowing a single sheet of paper at the bottom to fall off.  It revealed to Jane a typed up police report with a tiny coffee stain on one top corner, and a grainy mugshot on the other.  The man in it had messy black hair that partially covered his face.  Defined cheekbones poked through, as did colorless eyes that seemed to follow Jane wherever she turned.  Jane inched the paper closer to get a better look. 

“He’s proven completely resistant to all forms of treatment thus far.  Some on the board of directors are starting to lose hope.”

Jane nodded.  She skimmed the report, it was rather lacking in details.  She couldn’t even find the patient’s personal information.

“What are his symptoms?” she asked.

Erik turned grave.  “It’s hard to say.  Delusions, mostly, but beyond that, it’s unclear what the hell is running around in that head of his.”

“What about his meds?”

Erik hesitated, and then went back to rifling through his papers.

“See for yourself,” he said, and pulled out a thick, stapled packet that had Jane’s jaw dropping even before she got a good look at it, and the endless line of every drug on the market.  Some people complained of their patients being over-medicated, but those people had no idea.

“Jesus Christ…” Jane breathed, having flipped to the second to last page where a tiny blurb explains the patient’s total lack of side effects to a powerful sleeping medication.

“You’re starting to get it,” Erik said with a hollow laugh.  “I’d advise you not to bring up any deistic figures around him.  He might take that as validation.”

“Validation?”  Jane set the packet down.  “Validation of what?”

“His delusion,” said Erik.  “Our patient believes himself to be the Norse God of Mischief and Lies.”

Jane opened her mouth, but really, what was there that one could say about that?  They could laugh, and a layman in Jane’s place likely would have.  She knew better than to be so callous towards a patient, no matter how sick they were or whether or not she’d ever met them.  Glancing down at the mugshot again, she made out harsh bags under the eyes and a stringy, unwashed quality to the hair that hadn’t been readily apparent.  His expression was surly at best, like an old man angry about all the rowdy kids getting on his lawn, but she couldn’t find a single trace of anything godly about him. 

Of course you don’t, Jane, she said to herself. Because he’s not a god, and certainly not the Norse God of Lies.

The name escaped her, but it was on the tip of her tongue.  Jane was regretting now that she hadn’t borrowed Erik’s old mythology book more times when she was a kid.

“So he thinks he’s… Loki, was it?”

“The one and only,” Erik said.

He turned to the darkened window on the opposite wall, allowing Jane a quick reprieve to be proud of herself for getting it right.

“That is interesting,” she said when she was done and ready to be serious.  “So who is he really?”

Erik turned, looking worse now than ever before today.  Jane’s face fell.  The answer was clear before he ever said a word.

“We don’t know.  That’s the other part of the problem: his true identity is a complete mystery.”

Jane took that in.  There was no other logical way she could respond to it.  This wasn’t the first time they’d received a patient like this, but it that case, the man just had plain old retrograde amnesia, and it went away all on its own once his family was tracked down and came to visit.  It might have been the lack of attention put into this man’s file, or the fact that Erik had lost all traces of jovial charm in his voice and manner that made Jane realize it wouldn’t be so simple this time.

“Let me start from the beginning,” Erik said, removing his reading glasses.  “About two months ago, this man was found walking on the side of Highway 61.  A police cruiser spotted him and offered his a ride, but the man refused, seeing as gods don’t accept favors from lowly mortals in metal chariots.”

Jane stared at him.  Erik coughed.

“Those ah- those were his quoted words on the scene.  Anyway, the cruiser followed him for a while longer, until the driver had to answer a 911 call.  Later that night, this same guy strolls into the police station and just stands there, proclaiming himself to be a visiting god and demanding that everyone kneel before him.  They tried to remove him peacefully, but he stood his ground.  Eventually, that had to taser him and put him in lockup for… civil disobedience, they called it.  A doctor on staff declared him mentally unstable, and he was transferred here just a few days later.  He’s been in my care ever since.”

Erik took out a handkerchief and dabbed the sweat off his brow; it was soaked in seconds.  It was one of those times Jane really wished Erik would use some of that vacation time of his (he had to have accumulated three years’ worth by now) and just rest for a week or so.  It would never work, though.  As long as patients like this one were around, good old Erik Selvig, brilliant clinical psychologist to end all brilliant clinical psychologists, would be there.  Jane just had to hope that tenacity didn’t cost him another twenty or thirty years.

“So you’ve been working with him for two months,” Jane said, slipping easily into the ‘summation’ role Erik himself had taught her.  “And in all that time, you haven’t made any progress?”

Erik shook his head.  “It’s enough to make me want to rip all those diplomas off my wall and start working as a rodeo clown.”

Jane released a snicker, try as she might to prevent it.  The image of Erik in overalls and clown makeup running after bulls while half-drunk rednecks threw empty beer bottles at his feet was just too much.  If Erik was bothered by her mirth, he didn’t make it known.

“Now, the reason I called you down here is that I have a session with him in about five minutes, and O’d like for you to sit in and observe.”

Jane blinked. 

“You want me to go in there with you and your patient?”

“Well, maybe ‘sit in’ isn’t quite what I meant,” Erik amended, his eyes drifting increasing to the wall clock.  “I’d like you to watch through the two way mirror.  See what you can make of his behavior and mannerisms.  If he feels genuine to you or if you think he’s putting up false pretenses.”

“You make it sound like you’re prepping me to take over,” Jane said, with only a degree of joking, because Erik’s response threw that all down the toilet right away.

“One step at a time, Jane.”

His phone buzzed in his pocket.  Erik didn’t bother removing it, just clicked it off through the fabric of his pants. 

“It’s time,” he said.  He took a long, dragging breath to prepare himself and walked through the back door into the therapy room.  In an instant, the dark black wall became a clear window into a padded box, unfurnished barring the plain, metal table and chairs where a was being lead through another door to sit.

The man from the mugshot.

The man who thought himself a god.

He looked a lot better in person than he did in the picture.

That this was Jane’s first observation surprised her, and made her thing that perhaps her mother and her friends right about her needing a date.

That being said, if this man had not been mentally ill, and was just another guy Jane met on the street, she absolutely would’ve been attracted to him.  Hell, most women would.  Even disheveled, he maintained an essence of elegance Jane rarely saw in men (or women for that matter).  His stance was one of power, of a man assured of himself and his place in the world.  It was almost too much, leading Jane to believe that not all of it was as legitimate as he made it look.  His thin lips were set into a straight line, and he blinked several times when Erik sat down. His balding head blocked the patient from Jane’s view, annoying her in ways it under no circumstances should have.

“Good morning,” Erik said, his voice filtering out through the microphones and into the spinning recording device set up in the corner.  “How are you feeling?”

The man looked down, as if considering his answer.  When he looked back up, there was a gleam in his eye, though the rest of his face was a porcelain mask.

“Very well, thank you.”

Erik wrote something down in his notebook.

“That’s good,” he said.  “That’s very good, I’m glad to hear it.  I-”

“I still don’t like the beds here, and I could’ve sworn I requested a new one ages ago.”

Erik’s pen hand came to a stop. 

“Yes, I remember.  Unfortunately, all our beds are regulation.  We don’t have anything that differs from what you already have.”

The patient smiled.  “Then why don’t you bring me your bed from home.  It’s not as if you need it, Dr. Selvig.  When is the last time you slept?”

More silence.

Jane was stunned at the sheer nerve of the guy.

Erik just sighed.

 “I wanted to begin with what we talked about last time,” he said, going back to business without a hint of trouble.  “About your life on… Asgard.”

The patient tilted his head to one side.  “Why do you hesitate so?  I understand being in the presence of a god is overwhelming to say the least, but you are free to speak as you wish.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Erik said, and for the first time, Jane could detect the exhaustion in his tone.  Seemed the patient wasn’t just blowing smoke, but Jane knew that already.

“It is indeed,” said the patient.  “I should have killed you a thousand times over by now for all the despicable slights you’ve made against me.  If I didn’t enjoy your company so much, I would have.”

The young orderly at Jane’s side shook his head, blowing out a hard puff of air.

“That guy is beyond creepy.”

“Hey!” Jane snapped her head around.  “We don’t talk about patients like that.”

The orderly threw his hands up in surrender, walking backwards out the open door from whence he came, and were his buddies were all poking their heads in to catch a glimpse of the mysterious patient.  One look from Jane, and they scattered.  Like flies, they zoomed back to their menial jobs while Jane shut and locked the door tight behind them. 

It was another ten minutes before Erik was finished.  Jane checked her watch to make sure.  Erik was taking less time with this patient than he would a regular one.  Over the course of the last twenty minutes, Jane could see why that was.

 First and foremost, this man was out of his mind.  It gave her only a twinge of pain to think it, but for someone so deeply set into their delusions of grandeur and power, that they would so casually threaten the life of a doctor, there was really nothing more to say. 

Next was the way he treated every question Erik posed as an invitation to toy with him, to mock him, to manipulate using quick deductions of things like Erik’s sleeping patterns, all in the effort to scare him off.

And that brought her to another point: this man was smart.  Way too smart.  Jane had readily accepted long ago that intelligence and mental stability were often mutually exclusive.  Sitting before her was the greatest proof of it that had ever lived.  Every word out of his mouth was eloquent and firmly spoken.  He even had a British accent, just to make things better.

Erik took up his papers and pushed his chair out.  Standing at the door, he reminded the patient one more time of their next session in two days.

“It’s possible you’ll be seeing someone other than me.  Is that alright with you?”

The need to object was strong, enough that she didn’t want to wait until Erik was there to object to.  She should just burst into that room and lay down the law.  It had completely slipped her mind, the real reason he wanted her here.  This was the guy he was expected her to be able to help?  After what she’d just seen, she’d be happy to never be on the same floor as him again, let alone be his doctor.

The patient was silent, an oddity so far.  He seemed to be tuning Erik out, taking pleasure in letting him talk himself hoarse while not a single word reach the intended ears.

And then he looked up.  He looked up right at Jane.

And he smiled.

“Why do you think I’m so happy today, Doctor?”

Jane should’ve walked away right there.  In the coming week, she would desperately wish that she had, but right now, it was the paralyzing quality of his gaze that prevented the thought from entering her mind.  He never blinked, never looked away from that one spot where she stood.  It was impossible that he could know she was there.  Surely, he just picked a random space to focus on and she just happened to be standing on it.  That was the only logical explanation.  He displayed textbook narcissism and loved the look of himself, to the extent of his stare being hungry. 

Erik exited the session room, no worse for the wear, if a little more rumpled than when he went in.  He shifted the papers aside for future filing, and entered a few final observations into his notebook before sticking it into his jacket pocket out of sight.

“So, what do you make of him?”

Jane glanced away, and felt somehow lighter as she did. 

“Well… he needs help.  That’s for sure.”

Erik nodded.  “That pretty much sums up all my progress with him in the last two months.”

“Oh, I don’t believe that.”

It was good for her to go into ‘pep talk’ mode and have an excuse to get away from that mirror.  The chill up her spine could be dealt with later, or not at all.  She could sit with Erik and discuss the case; let herself fall into the comfortable world of her chosen profession and trade ideas with her mentor for hours.   It would be good brain exercise.  Other than Betty, she had no other close friends at work.

The tingling sensation on the back of her neck was all that kept her from relaxing.  Every now and then, she’d catch herself turning to that window again.  The lights long ago were doused, and the patient returned to his room.  Nothing remained but a square of black, and a lingering cold that for once, couldn’t be explained by the thermostat.

“Say, Erik,” she said, after a short period of time had passed.  “That _is_ two way glass over there, right?”

“Of course,” Erik said through the pen clamped between his teeth.  “All the session rooms down here have them.”

Jane cautioned a final turn of her head.  She viewed the wide and all-consuming darkness, behind which there could be nothing.  Because all the ghosts and ghouls her inner mind created were only make believe, just like magic and just like gods. 

“Okay, just checking,” she said, and she went back to her work with nothing to fear.

**

Jane’s apartment was a disaster.  She was a grown up and she could admit it.  She could also admit that there was little her disorganized and workaholic self could do about it.

When she walked through the front door, she could see almost the entire layout of the place.  She entered the living room, with books and papers stacked sky high on the coffee table, fed into the small kitchen area and a sink full of dirty dishes she had yet to tackle.  There was no dining room, but a long strip of hallway that led to her bedroom, the bathroom, and a linen closet that she hadn’t been able to open in months.  Her coat rack, normally the neatest part of the whole setup, was covered in a bulging pile of old coats and sweaters that had to be cleaned and pressed before the hospital clothing drive next month.  With it out of commission, her everyday coat became a crumpled heap stuffed into the corner. 

Four boxes of old files sat in pairs at the sides of her secondhand couch.  She’d been meaning to sort through those for almost a year now.  Maybe she’d start tomorrow.   Her TV was turned on to some nameless period drama.  It had been an action movie when she turned it on this morning.  She switched to the weather channel, and then shut it off once the radio’s forecast of heavy rain was confirmed.  She’d never been much of a television person.  She watched a favorite movie once in a while, and the rest of the time, the TV’s primary function was to dissuade potential burglars from invading an ‘occupied’ apartment while she was away.

It was a shoddy setup, but it worked for Jane.  As long as she had space to move and knew where everything was, there was never a problem.  She certainly didn’t have to worry about making a good impression for guests.  The only people who ever came to visit were delivery people, or close friends who had known her long enough to be used to it.

Pushing aside today’s newspaper and a half eaten power bar from breakfast, Jane sank onto her couch with a brand new manila folder in hand.  In it was everything currently known about their John Doe.  The paper stack was a fraction of an inch thick, a far cry from the paperback books that were many of her other patient files.  That they didn’t have a real name for him yet didn’t sit well with Jane.  She refused to think of the man as ‘Loki.’  That would just leave her receptive to his mind games when she met him in two days.  Not that ‘John’ was any better.  John was her father, not a mysterious quasi-European stranger with identity issues.

She would just have to stick with ‘the patient.’  A mouthful it may be, it was the safest option.  It kept her objective, reminded her that this was Erik’s case, nor hers.  She would not get attached.  She was just there to help.  Whether she could or not depended on just how good a clinical psychologist she really was.

She doubled and triple checked Erik’s (thankfully typed) notes.

The patient had officially been in their custody for one month and twenty three days.

The patient was complacent from the start and had no record of violent outbursts or harassment.

The patient was cooperative and polite to staff members, even when refusing food or trying to stay up past bedtime.

The patient had sessions with Erik twice a week, schedule permitting.  At one point, a prior engagement of his led to another doctor taking Erik’s place.  Said doctor reported no unusual activity with the patient, but made it clear that he would not agree to fill in for Erik again.

The patient had little to say about his background, claiming that they could read all about it in mythology books.  However, he went on to state that most accounts of ‘his’ exploits in the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda were either falsified or exaggerated, as were those of Thor, the Norse God of Thunder.

Related to the above, the patient displays clear contempt for the Thor character, for reasons he will not divulge.

He is similarly derisive of the Odin character, but seems to soften at the mention of Odin’s supposed consort, Frigga.  Again, he will not give a reason.

Upon being questioned of Sigyn, the mythological Loki’s wife, the patient claims she is fictitious, and that his true love was already married to the Thor character. 

Jane reread the last line, trying to call up the name of Thor’s wife in the mythology.  She believed it was Sif, but if she remembered correctly, Loki in the myths never showed much affection for her.  One time, he chopped all her hair off while she was sleeping just because he thought it was funny.  What kind of love was that?

 _‘The kind only a crazy person could come up with,’_ said the side of her that remained a know-it-all college student.

Jane lifted off the couch.  Scratching an itch on her scalp, she made her way to the bedroom.  The bed still hadn’t been made, but a little straightening of the sheets and a fluff of the pillows and she’d be fine for bedtime. 

Her closet door was wide open.  With so many boxes jutting out, it was impossible for it to be anything but.  Most of it was childhood toys and games she’d been too sentimental to throw away.  Even now, the thought of tossing it all on the curb or giving it away to charity was like a weight in her stomach.  Some mature adult she’d turned out to be.

At the very bottom was a purple striped shoe box.  Inside were the pages she’d ripped from Erik’s mythology book when she was eight.  On one of her family’s many visits to his house, she’d been so eager to finish the story she was reading, that when her mother told her it was time for them to head home and let uncle Erik get some sleep, she’d torn the pages right out of the binding and carried them home in her pocket.  To this day, she hadn’t told Erik it was her.

Sitting cross legged on the floor, Jane perused the browned pages.  The words in ancient style lettering transported her to a mead hall, where Thor and Loki donned the appearances of a bride and a bridesmaid to steal mjolnir back from King Thyrm.  She laughed whenever Thor almost blew his cover, and Loki had to smooth things over before they could get caught.  She could imagine Loki- whom she used to picture as kind of a goofy looking figure with a big, hairy nose and too many teeth- getting increasingly aggravated with the tactless thunder god, coming closer and closer to throwing his hands up and leaving him to screw himself over with his total lack of table manners. 

It was a good story, she thought, even if the ending was a bit brutal.  She might not have killed everyone in the room if it had been her, but that was why she was a tiny, pacifistic doctor and not a burly, volatile god who controlled the weather.

She went to return the papers to the box.  This had been more than enough of a break for her.  She had a lot of studying to do if she was going to be ready to meet her (no- _Erik’s_ ) patient.  Pulling the box out all the way, a few more items from her past were revealed, things she had never sought out before, and therefore never knew she still had.  There was the rubber band ball she used to play catch with, and here was the school photo of her first crush that she’d kept in the back of her science notebook for all of fourth and fifth grade. 

Further in was a folded piece of construction paper, inside of which appeared to be another, smaller, paper.  How something that thick could be so compact, she didn’t know.  A slight waxy scent wafted from it, explained away when Jane unfolded an extensive (and painfully juvenile) crayon drawing of two stick figures.  One had a pointy yellow crown on his head and a single red line trailing out from his neck like a cape.  The other had a shock of brown slashed over the head to form long hair.  She wore a pink blob of a dress and had a big, wide smile on her face as she and the other stick figure embraced.  Little shapes resembling hearts floated all around them, at least fifty of them.

Taped at the bottom was a lined piece of paper, covered in childish writing that had Jane grinning in spite of herself.

“I remember this,” she thought aloud. 

Jane settled back with her head resting on the side of the mattress.  Maybe another five minutes of break time wouldn’t hurt.

 _‘Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who lived in a tiny village,_ ’ she read.  _‘She had lots of good friends, but what she really wanted was a handsome prince.  One day, a handsome prince came to the town, and he met the beautiful girl and they fell in love at first sight.  The prince wanted to marry the girl, but then an evil wizard came and took her away!  So the prince traveled to the evil wizard’s house and beat him up with his sword.  And so the prince freed the beautiful girl and they got married.  And they all lived happily ever after.  The End.’_

She’d gotten a B plus and a smiley face sticker.  In retrospect, it was a good thing ‘writer’ had never been on Jane’s list of dream jobs, but for a six year old raised on a diet of myths and fairy tales, it was about all one could expect, and it was cute in its own way.  She’d been an imaginative little girl once upon a time.

But the time for fantasy was over, and she had a firm reality to face in the coming days: a windowless basement room, where resided a man who believed that reality _was_ fantasy.  Jane returned everything to its proper place and pushed the shoebox back into the depths of her closet.  She made a stop at the kitchen for some coffee and a bunch of grapes for a midnight snack.  Tonight, she would need an hour or five of researching, an hour after that of planning, and a good night’s sleep with whatever time she had left after that.

She was bringing her A-game for this one.


	2. Chapter Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much too long of a wait (I apologize), chapter two is finally here! 
> 
> And things are going to start getting creepy up in here, so watch out.

“This is Dr. Jane Foster of Genial North Psychiatric.  Today is Monday, January 21st, 2013.  The time is now 2:30 pm.  I am sitting with Patient 061386, Darcy Lewis.  This will be our first session following the incident on January 10th.”

Jane slid the microphone back into the stand and checked one more time that the recorder was running.  Upon finding everything in perfect working order, she turned to Darcy. 

In her newly laundered hospital gown, with her hair washed and brushed and her face clean of dirt, Darcy looked like her old self again, if a little more sullen than before.  She still could go out in plain clothes and walk among the people, and no one would have a clue what lurked within the recesses of her mind.  It gave Jane hope for the young woman's future.  Most of her hygienic needs, Darcy took care of on her own.  She did her own hair every morning, refusing any help from the nurses.  None of them knew how to get through the knots and tangles, she'd say.  They would always hurt her.  It was that tiny piece of independence and control that Darcy clung to.  Even with everything else out of her hands, she was still an adult and she was still human, and one day, she would take care of herself.  Jane did everything she could to encourage that, and if Darcy could just keep calm for a month or two and not have another outburst, Jane could probably sign her off for unsupervised bath times as well.

The first few sounds to be transcribed would be unintelligible.  A button on Jane's shirt was coming undone, and fixing it would require a lot of fumbling around.  By the time she was ready to go, she'd counted thirty ticks of the recorder, for almost thirty seconds.  Darcy would be getting bored soon.  Best they get started.

“Good afternoon, Darcy.  How are you feeling?”

Darcy rolled her eyes, as per her standard greeting for Jane and most other people (Ian typically got the eye roll, followed by a smile). 

“Are you tired or anxious?  Did you have a good night's sleep?”

It was hard not to take a more direct approach with Darcy.  Sometimes, and to her eternal shame, Jane was tempted to simply grab the girl and shake an answer out of her.  After so many months of nothing but back sass and constant fits, one could hardly blame her.

“It’s alright if you don’t want to talk to me right now,” Jane said, setting the clipboard aside and lacing her fingers together.

“No, it’s not,” Darcy croaked.

Jane tried not to wince.  Either she'd had nothing to drink all day or hadn't spoken a word since the incident.

“Of course it is."

“No, it’s not,” Darcy repeated.  “If it was, you’d get up and walk out of here.  You’d leave me alone.  You never do that, so I know it’s not alright.”

Jane lowered her head for a moment.  Raising it, she let the mask of pleasantries drop.

“You know I’m just here to help you, Darcy,” she said, “but you need to meet me halfway.  I won’t force you to do something you’re not ready to do, but sooner or later, I’d like you to tell me something.  Anything.  Just one thing.”

Darcy pursed her lips first, then it melted into a smirk.  That was something Jane had never seen before, except when ‘Max’ or ‘Nora’ was out to play.  Today, it was just Darcy, or Jane hoped it was. 

“Just one thing, huh?  Fine.  You have a coffee stain on your collar that looks like you drooled on it in your sleep, and you have the uptight disposition of someone who hasn’t been laid in a hundred years.”

Jane closed her eyes for a long time, so she only had to listen to Darcy giggle and rock back and forth on the bed.

 _‘That was two things,’_ Jane thought, and she picked up her clipboard and began to write.

**  
  
Erik was waiting for Jane when lunchtime was over.  He hung back outside the double doors, his hands shoved into his pockets as he swayed on his feet.  Jane spotted him while tossing her crumpled sandwich wrapping into the garbage.  Stacking her tray neatly on the pile, Jane hoisted her bag and went to greet her mentor.  
  
"You've ascended from the catacombs!" She gave him a brief hug.  "I thought you hated the cafeteria."  
  
"I do," was his gruff reply.  "I just thought we'd go over the case files one more time before your first session with the patient."  
  
"We went over them twice yesterday," Jane said.  
  
Erik lowered his gaze to his fingers, which flexed in and out continuously, desperate for something to wrap around.  That was a common tic of Erik's that Jane would know anywhere.  Though she tried to keep her work separate from her personal life, there was a part of her mind that was pure psychologist.  That wheel had never stopped turning since the moment Jane first held her degree in hand.  It told her now that Erik was scared, scared for her specifically.  He did the same thing when he had to tell Jane why her father wasn't coming home anymore, and again when he found out her first steady boyfriend had a criminal record and a history of domestic abuse.  It would pain Erik to know how easy he was to read, that his body language made him an open book, and he seemed to have a tell for everything he did.  He was the most honest man Jane has ever known, but the few times he did lie, it showed in his eyes.  He would suddenly become entranced with the top of her head.  It was worse when he was angry and trying to hide it.  He stomped around his office, fists clenched like he was going to punch a wall any second.  
  
After a while, Jane stopped looking for new tells, in both Erik and in everyone else, because once she started noticing them, she could never stop.  Even now, she couldn't talk to Betty when she started picking at her food and not eating.  It made Jane wonder what Betty's dad had done this week to make her hate him.  She had a hard time talking to her Mick, her kindly next door neighbor with the drug-addicted wife.  Any dulled and world wear word he spoke meant the same thing to Jane: just one more day before he left for good.    
  
It was this weird little talent, this hyper-observation as some had called it, that had let her know weeks beforehand that her second steady boyfriend was going to leave her for his research assistant.    
  
Jane could think of a hundred times in her life where she'd wished she just could turn her brain off and exist in her own little bubble.  Never left the outside world get her down again , but then, if she'd done something like that, she never would have become a doctor, and that would've been a tragedy.  
  
"I just... want to make sure you're really prepared for this," Erik said, when he finally found the strength to separate his hands and let them drop.  
  
"Erik, you worry way too much," Jane laughed.  "I've read this guy's file cover to cover, and it's not like he's the first person I've ever dealt with whose grip on reality has slipped."  
  
"This isn't like the others, Jane," Erik said, and for the first time, Jane noticed the hunched over way in which he moved.  "This one... he's different somehow."  
  
They arrived in the basement ward to the same monotonous scene from Jane's first visit.  The patient would have been brought to the session room by now if everything was running on schedule. Jane followed Erik to the intake desk, signing off on all the paperwork that would officially make the John Doe her patient.  As Erik added his signature above hers, he seemed almost sad to see the patient go, strange for someone who had been nothing but apprehensive of him and Jane's place as his new doctor. Of course,  Erik was not totally in the clear yet.  He was still the primary doctor, and Jane would report all her findings to him first.  Maybe that was why he looked so unhappy.  
  
"Session Room 8 is all ready for you, Doctors," said the orderly.  
  
"Thank you, Carol," Erik said.  He returned his access card to his pocket while Jane fingered hers, and together they made the final trek down the lengthy hall.  
  
Jane counted the room numbers as they passed.  Unsavory sounds emitted from Session Room 5, and someone was screaming in French- a language Jane had briefly studied in college and remembered just enough of to know that whoever was in there wasn't very polite- inside Session Room 7.  Session Room 8 was the only one with an unlocked door.  Erik didn't bother with a key and just twisted the doorknob once.  The pitch black room unfolded before Jane, a gust of cool air accompanying it.  The oddness of leaving a room that housed a mental patient open stuck out to Jane, until she remembered that the patient was locked inside a padded cell, unable to see anything but his reflection.   
  
"Now remember, Jane," Erik said.  His fingers were flexing again.  "If you at any point feel uncomfortable, or if he threatens you in any way, just get up and walk out.  Don't even bother saying goodbye."  
  
Jane took Erik's hands in hers, effectively cutting off his speech and his fidgeting.  As he went still under her grasp, Jane stretched up and kissed his cheek.  
  
"Thank you for giving me this opportunity, Erik," she said.  "I will do everything to help this patient."  
  
She let go, allowing Erik to rub his neck and sink into the closest chair.  He lowered his head, so that the thinning hair around his bald spot was in plain sight.  It created a twist in Jane's heart, a reminder of how very old her beloved mentor was getting. It sent a chill up her spine, but she couldn't help nothing the hand he had pressed over his heart.  
  
"I know you can," he said following a very deep breath.  "Forgive me, Jane.  I'm not trying to belittle you or your skill."  
  
"I know you aren't," said Jane.  
  
She pressed another kiss to his forehead, where the lightest of his worry lines were already fading.  Her notes in hand, she walked with a confident stride to the padded room.  The light inside was turned on, casting harsh rays on her patient.  He looked more ruffled this time than the last.  His eyes were downcast, rarely blinking.  He seemed consumed by a certain spot on his lap.  Not even when Jane unlocked the door did he move.  Before stepping inside, she heard the telltale clicking of the transcription device.  The initial reading was just a copy of the company's name and logo, followed by her name and an anonymous designation for the patient.  The time was noon on the dot.    
  
She had thirty minutes.    
  
The patient's head snapped up when she appeared.  His hair looked unwashed, like they had literally dragged him out of bed to get him here.  It added to his disheveled appearance, and made Jane wonder if they'd even changed his clothes in the past two days.  His attire was standard, hospital issued pants and shirt, the collar of which was pulled down to reveal a wide expanse of neck.  He was even paler around the collarbone than he was in the face.  He'd be pure white by the time they reached his navel.  His hands were firmly clasped on the table, thumbs twitching in time with her steps, like he was counting them off.  Jane allowed her eyes to linger for just long enough to note the tic for future reference.  Most likely, it indicated nerves and trepidation, likely associated with a new and (as far as he knew) untrustworthy figure entering his life.  She'd have to talk to him first before drawing a conclusion, though.  
  
He was otherwise still, no less energized than before Jane arrived.  Not until she pulled out the metal chair for her to sit did his lips start to curl.  They formed a smile the likes of which Jane had seen only once before, on a college research trip to a prison, where they got to sit in on a forensic therapist's session with a convicted serial killer.    
  
"Good afternoon, Jane Foster," the patient said in warm, syrupy tones that made her heart jump.  "I can't tell you how happy I am to see you."  
  
Jane's folder began to slip out of her hand, but at the last minute she tightened her grip, and schooled her face into something reasonably professional.  
  
"I see Dr. Selvig has mentioned me." Jane spread her hands out on the table.  "Well, I would appreciate if you called me Dr. Foster from now on.  Can you do that?"  
  
"Of course I could," he said, sliding down a bit in his chair and crossing his arms.  "Whether or not I  _want_  to is another matter entirely."  
  
His eyes were laughing, though his posture spoke of complete indifference.  Jane heaved a sigh.  If he thought petulance was going to get a rise out of her, he was sorely mistaken.    
  
"Alright," she said.  "Let's get down to business.  Let's talk about you.  How are you feeling today?"  
  
"Quite well," he said.  
  
Jane picked up her pen to write.    
  
"I've looked over some of your sessions with Dr. Selvig-"  
  
"I thought those were supposed to be confidential."  
  
Jane swallowed back what she'd been about to say next, but noted it for later.  
  
"That's true, and in most cases I would have never been granted access to those files."  She put the pen down to join her hands.  "But I'm going to be the one seeing you from now on, and that awards me certain privileges.  That's all.  You don't have to worry about your history being leaked out."  
  
"Oh, I'm not," the patient said.  "I merely wish to know where it is we stand.  I want to make sure you only know as much as you are supposed to."  
  
Jane felt like there was more to his reasoning that he wasn't telling, but she'd have to think more about that later when she wasn't recoiling from the sting of his words to her.  Only know what she's  _supposed_  to know?  Did he really just say that?  
    
Jane's pen scratched across the blank lined paper:  _potential superiority complex.  Mild to moderate narcissism?_  
  
"Okay, well, one thing I noticed was that you have been a bit closed off to Dr. Selvig in recent sessions."  
  
The patient quirks an eyebrow.  "Are you going to ask why that is?"  
  
"If I did, would you tell me?" Jane asked back.  
  
"Most likely not."  
  
"Then I'm not going to ask."  
  
His smile disappeared for the first time, and without it, Jane felt her breaths come and go much easier.  
  
"As a doctor, it's always been my philosophy that trust is the most important aspect of a patient/doctor relationship."  Jane pulled her chair in closer. "And in order to achieve that, it's my job to know all your boundaries and never overstep them.  So if there is anything you don't want to talk about, or I say something that makes you uncomfortable, don't be afraid to tell me."  
  
He pursed his lips, crossed one leg over the other, tilted his chin up to give the impression of looking down on her.  He seemed to do everything possible to give off a regal air, and for all that he was unkempt and unstable, it wasn't exactly failing.  Jane's free hand moved to her notepad, and she crossed off the word 'mild.'  
  
"I think you'll find it impossible to unnerve me," he said.  "If I were you, I would worry more for my own self."  
  
She crossed out 'moderate.'  
  
"I have no desire to draw this out any further.  Now that you're here, there is no need to."  
  
Jane stared at him.  "Now that  _I'm_  here?"  
  
The patient smiled again, and it was snake-like, evil almost.  Jane had never believed a human being could be truly evil, even if they were capable of evil things.  There were several figures in history and in her case files that almost made her question it, but even they never looked quite like this.  
  
"Of course," he said, so softly that Jane feared the microphone wouldn't pick it up.  "Because it's you, Jane.  This is all about you."  
  
His eyes closed, the visceral grin dying down to a mere shadow of itself.  His stance was contagious.  Jane found herself leaning away from him as well, and she couldn't say how much of it was secondhand from him and how much wasn't. Something thin and sharp was brushing the tip of her finger.  Jane pushed her notepad away to give herself more room.  She left it in an easy to find place, just in case she needed it later.  She didn't quite feel in a note taking mood.  
  
"Are you saying you  _do_  want to talk?"   
  
His eyes opened, and Jane noticed for the first time how unfathomably green they were.  Though in a certain light, she couldn't sworn they were light blue.  
  
"To you?" he asked, and the sheer warmth with which he spoke was as surprising as it was unsettling.  "Absolutely."  
  
The look of him now was nearly identical to the menace of before, but to Jane's eternal frustration and shame, it had her reacting in a much different way.  She shifted around in her seat, looking for a spot that allowed her to cross her legs without looking too obvious.  Not that this was going to help matters.  The patient's had a perceptive way about him, evident in his stronger posture and knowing gaze.  There had to be a reason he was chuckling like that.  
  
Jane coughed into her hand.  "Alright, that's fine.  Just let me know if you want to stop at any time."  
  
"You'll be the first," he said, raising himself up like a good student in class.  
  
"Tell me something about yourself," Jane began.  
  
"Have you not had your fill of my past exploits?"  
  
"You're talking about the mythology books?"  
  
The patient's lips puckered in a not very seductive way.  
  
"Mythology is perhaps the best term your people could have come up with for that drivel," he grumbled.  
  
"Why do you say that when before you were implying they were legitimate?"  
  
"I did no such thing, and frankly, Jane, I'm offended that you would accuse me of such."  
  
"Dr. Foster, please," Jane said with particular sternness, having realized that she'd forgotten to correct him the last time he used her first name.  "And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.  I only meant that I'd like some firsthand information from you.  Is there anything about your past that you'd like to talk about?  Any friends or relationships?  I know you mentioned something once about your brother's wife?"  
  
He went quiet, very quiet.  Jane only knew he was still breathing from the rise and fall of his chest.  His hands had slid off the table and now hung at his sides and out of Jane's sight.  There was something peculiar in his eyes that she couldn't place, except that it made her wish she could find the strength to get up and walk out of here like Erik said.  Eye contact was impossible now, when so much as trying made Jane want to scream at him and beat his chest for reasons she couldn't hope to explain.  
  
It was safe to say that the majority of her enthusiasm had been thrashed.  She should have seen it coming.  She'd barely cracked the surface, barely touched on the root of his delusion, and already she was in over her head.  If she had thought about it the day before, she would've said her ultimate goal was to have the patient walk out of here, perhaps still alone, but knowing that his place was in  _this_  world, not a fantasy world of gods and magic.  There was no Loki of Asgard.  He was an outdated fragment of a bygone era.  He was not a tangible being, and he was certainly not the white faced, scruffy, and likely malnourished man in front of her.  This was not a conflict for Jane, it was a clear fact of life.  She was a doctor, grounded in reality, and in reality, she was fast losing control of the situation.  
  
"If you'd like," she said as gently as she could, "we can talk about something else."  
  
The change that came over him then was- for lack of a better word- like magic.  Within seconds, he had drawn himself up, head held high with smoldering arrogance, the kind Jane had been half-convinced was all for show, and was now sure of it.   
  
"I'd rather talk about you, if that's alright."  
  
Jane would've been happy with any topic of discussion other than herself.  It felt like the longer he lingered on her, the more he tried to dominate the session.  There were so many implications and explanations she could come up with for that.  If she'd still been taking notes, the paper would be chaos by now.  
  
"Why do you want to talk about me?" she asked, dreading the answer.  
  
"I've already told you," he said.    
  
"Yeah, I guess you have," Jane said, and not entirely to him.  "What I'm not understanding is what you think I have to do with you and your life."  
  
He appeared deep in thought, but Jane had a feeling he didn't have to think about it that hard.  
  
"I  _know_  you have had quite a large impact on my life," he said after a beat.  "You have more to do with me, and I have more to do with you, than you will ever know."  
  
"How is that?"  
  
"Well, we've met before."  
  
He said it as though it should be taken as something obvious, like the color of the sky or the time of day.  Jane was pretty sure he was even laughing at her inside, and would have been outwardly too would it not contradict the standoffish aura he was trying to project. Whether or not she was right, Jane was not amused.  She was rapidly forgetting any misplaced attraction he might have inspired.  If this was a man she'd met in the street, she'd be punching him out after a minute of conversation.  
  
"We've met before," she repeated.  
  
"Indeed," he said.  
  
"Where have we met?"  
  
"In several places.  New York most recently."  
  
"I see," Jane said.  She'd never been to New York in her life.  "So why is it that I don't remember you?"  
  
One more time, there was that smile.  
  
"I'm afraid that is one question I will be unable to answer."  
  
"Unable, or unwilling?"  
  
He tsked.  "Now, Jane, I thought your job was to not overstep a patient's boundaries.  I could file a complaint about this."  
  
"It's  _Dr. Foster_."  
  
 _"I don't care!"  
_  
He slammed his hands down on the metal, creating an awful sound that split Jane's ears and her resolve.  With a strangled sound, Jane launched herself away from him.  She skidded an inch away from the wall.  Any closer and Jane would've been spending the next week in bed with a concussion.  His chest was heaving with labored breaths, his eyes wide and greener than ever before.  The word that came to Jane's mind was venom.  They were  _venomous_ , those eyes.  
  
The worst part of all was how normal and unassuming they became once he realized what he came back to his senses.  With steady hands, he smoothed out the wrinkles of his shirt.  The unbuttoned top was pulled down, showing even more of his torso than before.  It looked like Jane wasn't far off about just how pale he could get.  
  
"You must excuse me," he said, and it came out stilted, giving Jane the impression that he give apologies often.  "I... lost control of myself, and I forgot that I too have boundaries to abide by.  I hope this will not affect our next encounter in any way."  
  
Though Jane's body was stiff from the shock, her mouth was working perfectly.  
  
"It won't."  
  
He gave a tiny nod of his head, and fell hard into his chair like all the strength in his body had been expelled in one quick motion.  There he stayed, hunched over and silent, his face hidden by that uncontrollable mass of hair until the orderlies took him away.  
  
**  
"A hell of a conversationalist, isn't he?"  
  
There was a part of Jane that was happy to see her mentor regain his color and his sense of humor, but that part of her was buried deep beneath the part that wanted to collapse on the first soft thing in sight and scratch the eyes out of anyone who dared stop her.  A desk and an ice pack for her head would do for now, but she still wished Erik would stop pacing around the room like that.  It was making her dizzy.  
  
"I haven't even tackled his delusions yet," she muttered.  
  
"No, but you've established common ground with him," said Erik.  
  
Jane glanced up.  "Have I?"  
  
"You got more out of him in an hour than I have in two months."  
  
Ah, so maybe there was a little self-loathing left.  They'd have to work on that.  First, Jane had a mountain notes to write and a hundred new theories to weed through.  Seventy five percent of them would never see the light of day.  Around ten percent of the remainder would get written down, and only ten percent of those would ever get serious consideration.  That was Jane's normal process, the one she'd gone through to pinpoint the best way to help Ian, and the one that she was still working on for Darcy.  The problem was that it was hard to take her usual percentages when the number of feasible ideas was zero.    
  
"He said we'd met before," she thought aloud.  "What could he have meant by that?"  
  
Erik shrugged.  "Patients do that sometimes, insert real figures into their imaginary worlds.  He told me once that I used to be his human slave until I broke free from his mind control."  
  
"That's not surprising," Jane said.  "The raging God complex was the first thing I noticed."  
  
It was actually the second thing she noticed, but if Erik knew the first thing, he'd stick  _her_  in the padded room.  
  
"So what do you think?" he asked once he'd tired himself out and come to rest beside her.  Jane's empty notebook with the half crossed out line of writing sat in front of him.  "Any ideas?"  
  
Jane took the pen she'd been preforming a drum solo with for the past few minutes and put it behind her ear.  She picked up the notebook.  
  
"Ask me again tomorrow."  
  
**  
 _"...I felt cold, very cold.  Kind of like being outside in winter without a jacket.  That cold."  
  
"And what happened after that, Ian?"_  
  
The ten second pause was punctuated by eleven clicks of the recorder, like the ticking of a clock.  Jane always counted them without ever meaning to.  Someday, she'd save time and energy by using the fast forward feature, but today was not that day.  
  
 _"What happened after that, Ian?"_  
  
 _"It- it was very cold."_  
  
 _"I know it was.  Was there anything else?"_  
  
This pause was seven seconds, so that was eight ticks.  
  
 _"I think I remember a shadow.  Something intangible like a cloud or a mist.  It was standing behind me, I can't really be sure. It was bigger than me too."_  
  
 _"And what was the shadow doing?"_  
  
 _"Nothing, just hovering, just out of sight."_  
  
 _"And how did you feel?"_  
  
Five seconds.  Six ticks.  
  
 _"I felt... scared.  Really scared, I... I just wanted to wake up."  
  
_ One resounding click.  Ten seconds.  Silence.  
  
Jane tore her eyes from the window.  The little red bird flitting around it's nest would have to find another audience.  Jane grabbed her tape recorder.  It was an old fashioned tool of the trade and she'd benefit from converting solely to her laptop, but there was something personal about the handheld device.  Maybe because it reminded her of days spent playing with the one her mom kept for grocery lists.  She wasn't a very sentimental person, but even she had her moments.  It wouldn't matter either way.  This was the third time in a month this thing had broken down on her, and something had to be done.    
  
"Come on," Jane said, groaning when her usual repair method (shaking it hard and hitting the sides) failed to start the thing back up.  "Dammit."  
  
She tossed it aside for later.  Maybe it just needed the batteries changed.  With that no longer on the table, Jane turned to her laptop, and the written transcript of her and Ian's last session.  It went on as she remembered.  Ian woke up from his dream and felt nervous and anxious for the rest of the day.  He thought he saw his brother hiding in crevices, behind doors, and under trees several times.  He wanted to have his recreation time indoors for a while.  Jane promised to work something out.  That was the end of the transcript.  They usually stopped right before Jane said her goodbyes.    
  
Jane shut the laptop down.  Retreading old ground wasn't going to do her any good tonight.  She'd be better served going over Darcy's case file once more, but even that would be too tiring right now.  It was really kind of amazing: she'd once covered for two sick colleagues and fielded ten different sessions in one day without breaking a sweat.  She'd had two patients today, and combined they had left her exhausted.  That she was still awake at all had to mean her stress levels had activated some latent superhuman endurance.  
  
It was fading fast, whatever it was.  The lack of stimulation from work or even light reading was leaving her weak and vulnerable to the need for rest.  But it was only 7:30, and to go to bed at any time before one in the morning was unacceptable.  So much time that could have been spent being productive would be wasted. She could be typing up that letter to the hospital administrator she'd been putting off, or she could go and start organizing the files next to the couch.  Or she could put her head down for a minute just to think it over, and decide which she should do first, and which she should do...  
  
**  
A shrill and constant cry caused Jane to come to.  In her initial, dazed state, she mistook the sound to be coming from her ear and turned to sleep on the other one.  When it refused to stop, Jane's consciousness returned, and she recognized the rising and falling notes of her ringtone.  Cracking one eye open, a vibrating cell phone was the sight that greeted her.  Jane sat up, the bones in her arms and back cracking painfully.  She rubbed the latter as best she could, but she was going to be feeling that in the morning for sure.    
  
 _'Serves you right for falling asleep at the table,'_  she thought to herself.    
  
Clumsy hands clamored for the phone.  She found it next to the fruit bowl, the light blinding her like the sun at dawn. The call ID showed a number Jane wasn't familiar with, and no name.  She almost didn't answer it ( _'prank callers...'_ ) but her finger moved on it's own to accept the call.  
  
Cold laughter was the first thing Jane heard.  
  
"Only three rings, Jane?"  There was low static on his end, hovering just under his voice.  "I was sure you'd make me wait longer."  
  
Jane's left eye started to sting, and she rubbed it hard to release the sand.  She was surprised that this alone didn't jolt her into a more wakeful state.  This was by no means the first time a patient had invaded her dreams, and it wouldn't be the last.  She had long ago learned to just accept and roll with it.  Sure, they'd never felt this real or this average before (she had dreamed last week that she and Darcy were throwing fish into an invisible, floating ocean), but she could adapt, and odds were good she'd wake up soon if she was already this aware.  
  
"How did you get my number?" she asked.  Wouldn't hurt to play along for a bit.  
  
"The same way I obtained a telephone."  
  
Jane rolled her eyes.  It figured that even as a figment of her imagination, he would be difficult.  
  
"You know you're not supposed to call your doctors at home, right?"  
  
"Selvig said the same thing," he answered, and from that alone Jane could picture him on the other end, laying on a throne with his feet up, and a bowl full of grapes that some scantily clad slave girl was feeding him one at a time.  Now that she'd imagined it, so it would be.  She hoped he appreciated it.  Maybe next time, she'd bring him into the kitchen in her black cocktail dress and a horse head mask.    
  
"So why did you call?"  
  
He gave a long, exaggerated hum.  "I'm just checking up on you.  We didn't leave off on a good spot, and I didn't want your opinion of me to sour because of it.  I see that I at least didn't stop you from throwing yourself into your work.  Still, I doubt you've been comfortable sleeping on that old chair.  It doesn't even have a back to it.  Certainly a bed would be a more suitable resting place."  
  
Jane blinked her eyes once or twice, and slowly turned around to the empty space behind her.  She lifted herself on the hind legs of the stood.  The wood creaking in an ominous way and she set it right back down.  
  
"It's really not any of your business where I sleep," she said.    
  
"I'm only saying it because I care about you."  
  
"Yeah, you've made that abundantly clear."  Jane switched the phone to her other ear and pushed away a mountain of mussed up hair that was scratching her cheeks to pieces.    
  
"A hairband would serve you better, wouldn't you agree?"  
  
Jane halted in her movements, her hand moving at a snail's pace away from her head.  She glanced at the pantry door, opened a crack to let the light out.  Her living room was untouched, her kitchen loud with silence.  Outside was pitch black. All the streetlights seemed to have gone out at the same time.  Or had they always been out?  What time was it anyway?    
  
The microwave read ten after three, but it had been stuck at that time for months and could only be trusted twice a day (once if you factored in the periods).  Her phone could tell her the time, but Jane found she was unable to pull it away from her ear. Something strong like glue and compelling like a spell was rendering her hand immobile, and keeping his voice a coat of frost in her ear.    
  
"You won't get rid of me that easily, Jane," he said, lowering his voice in the most predictable way possible.  Really, does he think she's never seen a horror movie?  She could gag.  
  
"You don't scare me," she told him firmly.  "You don't scare me in reality, and you sure as hell don't scare me in a dream."  
  
"I'm not trying to scare you," he said, and Jane got the distinct feeling that her subconscious was starting to mock her.  "Dream or no dream, I merely wanted to talk to you."  
  
"Then you can wait for our next session on Thursday."  
  
"I don't want to.  That's why I called."  
  
Jane sighed.  The thought of slamming her head on the table until she either woke up or knocked herself into a more dreamless state was becoming very tempting.  
  
"Please don't do that," he said.  "I would hate for you to mar your lovely face with a bruise."  
  
Also, that.  That was getting annoying.  
  
"Look, if you're going to bother me while I'm sleeping, you could at least not resort to sexual harassment."  
  
"A simple compliment and request that you not hurt yourself now constitutes harassment?"  He sounded more offended than he should be. "When on earth did your people become so very sensitive?"  
  
"1964.  Are we done here?"   
  
The static spiked for a moment, but when it passed, his voice was as clear as day.  
  
"For now, I suppose.  I see that I have taken enough of your valuable time."  
  
"You got that right," Jane said, rubbing once more at eyes that just  _wouldn't stop burning_.  "Why couldn't you just wait until our next session?"  
  
She can't expect her mind to supply the unreal voice an answer.  If she doesn't know, neither would the voice in her head.  Her phone hand was still impossible to budge, likely to remain so until this dream came to a merciful end.  That could happen any time now as far as Jane was concerned.  It might have been the length of the dream or the eerie way in which her body felt light and unburdened by the call of slumber.  Of course, she could feel however she wanted to in her dream.  Hell, with a little practice and meditation, she could probably sprout wings and fly!  Hadn't that been the topic of her old college roommate's thesis paper?  
  
"Try not to daydream, Jane," he sang through the receiver, though it sounded now like he was there, right beside her, whispering in her ear like a ghost. "We have precious little time left to converse."  
  
Jane closed her eyes tight.  The stinging did not diminish.    
  
"I've said all I have to say," she said  
  
"I don't believe you," he said.  
  
"It doesn't matter if you do or don't.  You're not real."  
  
Another burst of static.  This one left pounding echoes in the back of her skull.  
  
"You'd best be careful, Jane," his voice mingled with the static now.  "Or you'll find that more of this is real than you can ever hope to comprehend."  
  
"Don't call me Jane," she snapped.  It came out over the question she'd been dying to ask since the first time he said her name.  "Why are you doing this?"  
  
Her eyes were getting heavy, and though it did little to numb the pain, Jane felt a great sense relief at the thought of slipping back into peaceful oblivion, and forgetting about life until morning came, when she would have to reflect on the events of this dream and what they had to say about her current state of mind.   
  
Before the gift of silence could be bestowed upon her, the fragmented, dark little voice ran purred into her ear one last time.  
  
"It's just a bit of fun."  
  
**  
A shrill and constant cry caused Jane to jump out of her seat onto the floor.  Her frantically grabbing hands found no purchase, and Jane would be feeling that bruise on her behind every time she walked for the rest of the day.  Sunlight was streaming through the open blinds.  The kitchen table, covered in a heaping pile of books and dirty dishes, did little to shield her from the worst of it, and if Jane hadn't been awake before, she absolutely was now.  
  
It took several tries before her legs would cooperate with the rest of her body.  Used the old baker's rack for support, Jane got herself back on her feet and took a moment to work out the kinks in her back and neck, though she suspected it was going to take more than a few stretches to make that go away.    
  
 _'I can't believe I fell asleep at the table.  What's wrong with me?'  
_  
Clearly a lot if that dream was any indication.  Jane didn't have time to dwell on it right now, nor the fact that she appeared to have a full and perfect memory of it, right down to the last detail.  That disturbing static and that tremendous burning wasn't likely to leave her any time soon.  And to think, she was going to see the patient again in just two days!  
  
 _'Maybe_ I'm _the one who needs a vacation,'_ she thought.  
  
After dusting herself off, Jane finally attending to her ringing phone.  In the time since she'd been so rudely awakened, it had gone to voicemail twice, only to immediately start up again seconds later.  Whoever was on the other end really needed to talk to her.  If this had been her work phone, Jane would've been worried.  She picked the shivering phone up.  The number on the screen was Erik's.  
  
And now she was worried.  
  
"Erik, what's going on?" Jane asked without preamble.  "Is something wrong with the patient?"  
  
"It's a patient alright," Erik gravely responded.  "Not ours, though.  One of yours."  
  
Jane's stomach dropped.  All thoughts of dreams and John Does were wiped clean away.  She didn't need to hear any more.  She didn't even need to ask why Erik was calling personally and not letting a nurse do the job they were trained to do.  Between her and Erik, there would never be a true working relationship.  They knew each other too well.  They were family.  Of course he would be the one to call her, to try and give it to her gently.  
  
"Darcy," Jane's voice was cracking.  
  
Erik was silent for far too long.  "I'm so sorry, Jane.  No one knows how it happened, but she got out of her room last night and broke into the pharmacy.  They found her there this morning unresponsive.  They're trying to stabilize her as we speak, but... right now, there's no telling whether or not she'll make it."  
  
Jane pressed the phone into her chest.  She grit her teeth and banged the back of her head into the wall.  It didn't make the whole thing also a dream.  It didn't even make her feel better.  It just gave her one more aching pain to follow her throughout the day.  
  
"I'll be right over," Jane said into the phone, forcing herself to sound firm and in control.  "Stay with her until I get there, alright?"  
  
"You know I will."  
  
Jane ended the call and threw her phone aside.  She'd likely forget to take it with her, but that was unimportant.  Throwing off her clothes from yesterday, Jane struggled to get into another shirt and a pair of light blue jeans.  Not exactly work attire, but it would do.  In the bathroom, Jane threw open the medicine cabinet behind the mirror, fished out a half full bottle of Tylenol, and dry gulped two of them down.  The wait for the pills to take effect would be long and arduous, but Jane would have plenty to distract herself with until then.    
  
She slammed the cabinet door shut.  
  
She screamed.  
  
She scrunched her eyes shut and let her head fall into her hands.  The burning was coming back, fast and unforgiving.  It raged across her vision, sending flames dancing through the tinted blackness, and when it passed, it went like the light of a candle.  Nothing was left behind but some wisps of tingling and a feeling of her insides being charred black.  Jane opened her eyes, they fluttered in her hands which she then proceeded to drop.  If she hesitated, fear would take hold of her heart and she would be stuck here for God only knows how long trying to make herself look in the mirror.  To see only the normal and- dare she say it- boring dark brown that had characterized her since birth.  
  
And that was exactly what she did see.  Boring old brown, nothing more and nothing less.  
  
Not a hint of deep, blood red to be found. 


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I can say is that I'm sorry for the wait. Hope this is worth it!

Jane watched a nurse enter Darcy’s room to check her vitals and fluff her pillows as if watching a movie. A really bad movie, the kind she’d walk out of twenty minutes in.  There was nothing about the image of Darcy— sweet, snarky, difficult Darcy— laid out on a hospital bed with tubes sticking out of her mouth that didn’t make Jane want to find something big and fragile to smash into pieces.  Her ire was only partly to do with a pair of nurse’s aides on staff, whispering to each other in the corner of the room.

“I heard she wasan addict before she got locked up,” one nurse whispered.

And the other one shook her head.  “You just know that even if she makes it this time, we’re going to be seeing a lot of her.”

To avoid punching their lights out, Jane had pretended to need a bathroom break and spent the next ten minutes in a cramped stall, resting her back of her head on ice cold metal.  It numbed all the physical pain, but inside she continued to ache.  Malaise came over her as she spent the next hour at Darcy’s side, feeling like she was the one who should be on that bed.  A receptionist had seen through her façade and brought her some hot chocolate and a pillow for her chair.  Jane thanked her, but her voice was a mere whisper, and her words were slurred.  The woman may not have heard her at all, but she still smiled at Jane, and wished her all the best.

Jane spent the time at Darcy’s bedside flipping through files.  They didn’t pertain to Darcy’s case or any of her other patients either.  It been left behind by a very careless doctor, and Jane just needed something to keep her hands busy.  If her body was in motion that was less brain power she had to dedicate to thinking.  It was odd for a doctor to say, but thinking was bad for her right now.  Thinking meant wondering, and wondering meant theorizing, and there wasn’t a theory or a hypothesis in the world that could give Jane clarity on this.

A nurse came at ten after six to check Darcy’s vitals, a different nurse from before, thank goodness.  She was a kindly old grandmother of a woman, her steel grey hair permed and her face soft and gentle.  She had lines at the corner of her mouth that told Jane she smiled often.  The nametag around her neck was party covered by the folds of her scrubs.  Jane could make out a ‘B’ and nothing else.

‘Barbara?’

‘Bethany?’

‘Bertha?’

“How is has she been?” the nurse asked.  Caught up in her guessing game, Jane almost missed the question.

“She’s been stable, as far as I can tell,” Jane said.  The heart monitor had been beeping steadily with no sign of increase or decrease for hours. 

“Everything does look good,” the nurse said, checking the monitor and a few others wires and machines Jane only vaguely knew the function of.  “I think she’s going to make it through the night.  After that, it shouldn’t be long before she’s recovered enough to be transferred back to Genial North.”

Jane nodded.  She felt a bit like a balloon had deflated in her stomach.

“Why don’t you go home and get some rest,” said the nurse.  “Visiting hours are almost over.”

“Yeah, I guess I should,” said Jane.  She picked up her bag and her coat.  Outside, the sun was halfway through sinking below the earth.  Betty or one of the other doctors will have taken care of her regular visits by now.  She could probably get away with a day off under the circumstances.  If not… well, she’d take that up with her boss tomorrow, after full a night of sleep in her bed.

She wouldn’t even bother sitting at the kitchen table with her notes tonight.  No way could she make herself focus after the last few hours.  Even her John Doe had been out of mind since noon.  Aside from a voicemail from Erik that she had yet to listen to, there’d been nothing around to remind of her him.  For that, Jane was eternally grateful.  She’d be using this hospital the next time she got hurt for sure.

“Before I go,” Jane said at the door.  “How was Darcy before I came in?”

The nurse’s face fell, and her demeanor shifted.  She had seen a lot of cases like this in her time, and used to it as she was, they wore her down, and they ate away at the cheerful optimism that had characterized her in her younger days.  That was Jane’s guess anyway.

“She was in trouble for a while,” said the nurse.  “This is only the second time I’ve seen her myself, but the first time, I was sure that she wouldn’t make it.  I’m happy to see she’s stronger than I thought.”

Jane smiled.  “Yeah, she’s tough one, Darcy… was there anything else?”

“You can look at the files if you want to know more.  They’ll tell you more than I can.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that.”

Jane stepped into the hall.  She had her coat draped over her arm and it was freezing outside.  She was likely to regret not putting it on sooner once she got into the car lot and into her car with its ever unreliable heating system puffing smoke in her face instead of warmth.  One of these days, she was going to stop at that Chevrolet lot a block away from her building, and then she was going to-

“Dr.  Foster!  Oh, wait just one second, Doctor!”

The nurse was running towards her, and she’d dislodged her name tag from between two buttons.  ‘Beatrice,’ it read.  Jane hadn’t even been close.

“I’m so sorry, I just remembered something.”  The nurse paused to catch her breath.  Running most likely wasn’t her normal choice of exercise.  Jane could relate.

“You did?  What is it?”  Jane didn’t want to sound pushy about it, but she really, _really_ needed the nurse to tell her.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” the nurse said between pants.  “I know that people in a semi-conscious state can blurt out the most meaningless things, or even complete gibberish that has no greater meaning then ‘oh, my head hurts.’”

If that was a joke, Jane couldn’t manage more than a weak almost-smile.

“Go on,” she urged her.

The nurse took a breath.  “Well, when she was first brought in, I supervised her admittance into the ICU.  When I was checking her pulse, I could’ve sworn I heard her whispering.”

Jane should grabbed her notebook before she left: the pocket sized one that was mostly full of lunchtime doodles and the odd introspective about that pear shaped crack in her bedroom wall.  There were at least two empty pages in the back that would have been perfect right now.

“What was she saying?”  Jane asked.  Would it be too forward for her to take the woman’s hand?  No, it probably was.

The woman glanced around at the doctors and nurses lost in their own worlds full of paperwork and sick patients, almost as if she expected them to be listening in ready to silence her as soon as she said too much.  To Jane, they were all but invisible. 

“Well, it was very quick… and my ears aren’t quite what they used to be… but I believe she said, _‘nothing real.’_ ”

**

The time between Darcy’s suicide attempt and Jane’s Thursday morning sessions passed Jane by in a blur of motion and color.  She went into work that day on an empty stomach, having found herself unable to look at her scrambled eggs and toast, let alone eat it.  Probably not one of her best decisions; she was starving by the time Ian’s session began.  After him, she had two more patients to go before lunchtime two hours from now.  She didn’t think she was going to make it.

To distract herself, she counted backwards from one hundred to one ten times and patted the back of the young man who held on to her like a lifeline.  He cried his eyes out into her shirt, which she would probably have to change.  It was times like this that made Jane forget Ian was a man in his twenties.  His age was only a number.  His life had been long stretches of abuse at the hands of those who should love him, with hospital stays like this one scattered here and there.  His doctor before Jane determined that his mental age was half what it should be, which could account for his curling up into her like he’d just watching a scary movie he couldn’t handle.  Not that Jane could blame him for crying at a time like this.

“I- I think I could’ve stopped her,” his face was red and puffy, and his words were so garbled that Jane had to guess most of them.  “If she’dve told me, I could’ve  stopped her, I could’ve…”

“Relax, Ian,” Jane said.  She cradled him like a child, heavy as he was.  “There’s nothing you could have done.  There’s nothing any of us could have done.  You know Darcy’s very sick, that’s why she needs people like you and me to take care of her.  All we can do now is hope for the best.”

“I’m afraid she’ll die,” Ian said, voicing aloud everything Jane had dwelled on in silence.

“She won’t die,” Jane said.  She looked straight ahead—the side of Ian’s head just barely in her vision—and found a glove dispenser with a reflective surface staring back at her.  “We both know she’s too stubborn for that.”

Jane allowed Ian to slip off her lap.  He sat hunched over on his bed like he was nearing death.  He’d always been small and skinny, but today he seemed to shrink before Jane’s eyes.  She placed a hand on Ian’s shoulder, guiding him to look at her.  He took the tissue she offered him, wiped his eyes, and blew his nose.  He crumpled it up in his hands and held it there without a thought for the waste bin just within his reach.

“I have to ask you something very important, Ian,” Jane said. “I need to know if Darcy said anything to you recently that was… strange or different than usual.”

Ian blinked; his eyes looked bigger when they were dry.

“Different… well, she talks about her mother a lot.”

Jane felt a stabbing in her gut.

“She says she wants to see her again.”

It went in deeper and twisted. 

“Was there anything else?” Jane asked.

Ian thought hard, scrunching his face together so that it became even redder.

“I don’t know,” he squeaked.  “I don’t… I don’t remember.  What if she did and I forgot about it?  Oh God, is this all my fault?”

“No, no, Ian.  This is not your fault at all.  This-“

But Ian was gone again, regressed back to that needy child who was desperate to have his only friend back.  He hugged Jane to him in Darcy’s absence, and kept her there, running tears down the lining of her coat, until the clock struck ten.

**

“Do you want to talk about it?” Erik asked on their way to the basement. 

Jane had just forced an entire ham sandwich down her throat against the protests of her stomach, so no she didn’t want to talk about anything right now.

If she had her way, she wouldn’t even be seeing The Patient today.  She’d chalked the dream up to stress coupled with an uncomfortable sleeping position, but that didn’t make her any more eager to face a man slowly wheedling his way into her mind, intentionally or otherwise.  That was supposed to go the other way around.

“We could reschedule if you need some time to yourself,” Erik said.

_‘Yes!  Thank you!  I would love to!’_

“No, I can’t do that,” said Jane, biting back the omnipresent voice of dissent.  “I’m better off keeping myself busy than sitting back and worrying.”

**

Within ten minutes of the start of the session, Jane had filled two pages in her book with notes.  None of them were anything relevant; she just didn’t know what else to do with herself.  She scribbled and doodled whatever came to mind while the patient stared up at the ceiling and traced the lines with his eyes.  Nary a word had passed his lips from the moment Jane sat down, to now.  If this was some grand plan of his to make Jane uncomfortable, and therefore pliable, it wasn’t exactly failing.

In the ensuring five minutes (Jane found herself checking her watch every few seconds), the patient leaned his chair back on its hind legs, maintaining perfect balance as he propped his feet up on the metal tabletop.  Jane glanced at his standard issue blue slippers—they barely fit over his large feet— and then at him.  He never looked her way, but moved them back to the ground and sat normally.  He whistled the opening notes to a song Jane could’ve sworn had been sung by the Beatles, and that was about all she could take.

“So,” she said.  He stopped whistling.  “I hope you’re having a good day.”

He studied her, like he was trying to determine if that was a joke or not. 

“It’s marginally better than yesterday,” he said.  “I find myself in much more pleasant company.  Your orderlies aren’t the friendliest bunch.”

“If you feel they’ve been mistreating you, you’re allowed to file a complaint.”

“That won’t be necessary.  There is little they could do to me even if they wanted to.”

Jane thought about scrawling a note about a possible God complex, but that was why they were here in the first place, wasn’t it?

“Okay, that’s fine.  Now let’s talk about you,” she said. 

He groaned.  “Must we?  I so prefer it when you are the subject of our conversations.  Tell me, did you sleep well last night?”

Jane’s pen, with which she’d been writing a few thoughts on the patient’s tone of voice, skewed off to the side of the page, leaving an ugly line that tore through the paper and left a corner hanging by a fiber. 

The reaction was unprecedented, even for her.  It was also unnecessary, and an oversight on her part.  What did it matter to her if a patient asked an innocuous (if somewhat intrusive) question such as that, just because she happened to hear his voice in her head a few nights ago?  Coincidences happened and when they did, that was all they were: simple coincidences.  A doctor should know that.

“I wanted to talk to you about some reading I’ve been doing,” Jane said.

The patient frowned, no doubt disappointed by her dodging his question.  Jane would write that one down, but she seemed to have misplaced her pen.

“I get the feeling it wasn’t very compelling,” said the patient.

“It was the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda-“

“Oh, of _course.”_

“-and I wanted to ask you a few questions about some of the mythology.”

“Haven’t we already established that it’s nothing but tall tales?  Why you continue to push the issue is beyond me.”

“I’m just covering my bases.”

Jane flipped back to the notes she took on the myths. They were a bit sparser than she had hoped, but going over the old stories in Erik’s book (that he’d so graciously lent to her after apologizing once again for the mysterious missing pages) had sent her on a full nostalgia ride, and it was hard not to get carried away when Thor was doing battle with the fearsome world serpent.  Certain lines were bolded and highlighted to delineate importance.  On the next page were her questions, arranged neatly in a column with extra space off to the side in case she wanted to write something else.

“I guess we’ll start from the beginning,” she said.

“How about we don’t start at all?”

Jane gave him a look of warning, soft, yet firm.  Any other patient would have been cowed by it.

“First of all,” Jane tapped her finger over the first question.  “You are of the belief that your true identity is Loki, the God of Mischief.”

“You say that as if I’m some kind of madman.”

Jane frowned at him, but moved on to the next line.

“You’ve also said that your parents were Odin and Frigga.”

His fists clenched around his sleeves, his mouth hardening.  Jane watched him closely, taking a mental picture of him now in place of writing his actions down, as would have been infinitely easier.  She checked her pockets and under the notebook one more time for that stupid lost pen, but nothing.

“My parentage is not something I wish to discuss,” he said curtly.  “I believe you mentioned last time that you would respect my boundaries as I set them?  Well, I set them here.  I hope you are as willing to comply with my wishes as you claim.”

It’s really a shame that Jane did say that and meant it.  After everything, she’d love to press him for more, to squeeze him dry of every detail and then leave with a song of her own on her lips back to comfortable reality.  Not often did a patient drive her to such extremes, but that was before _the_ patient.  He was likely to go down in her book capitalized, with a big color photo in the center. 

“Okay,” Jane said, writing a small blurb in her notes about possible family and abandonment issues.  “We’ll skip over that for now.”

She added the ‘for now’ to see if he’d jump on it.  He did not.  Jane was almost disappointed.

“How about Sigyn?  You mentioned to Erik that she wasn’t really your wife.”

“She wasn’t really _real_ is more like it.”  The patient’s demeanor and tone took on great annoyance.  “Some fanatical story teller of old with delusions of true love conquering all created her in his head and then spread her name as if she truly existed, all because he believed I should find a wife and settle down.”

“That must have bothered you.”

“Is it a doctor’s job to make worthless comments and repeat the obvious?”

Jane’s mouth twitched.  _‘Remember not to start fights with the patients…’_

“The same foolhardy man also spread the story of Thor’s courtship with Sif, a ridiculous notion then _and_ now.”

Now there was something Jane hadn’t heard before.  In almost all of the recorded sessions with Erik, the patient had remained completely mum on the subject of his brother and sister-in-law.  His only mention of them was that infamous claim of having loved said in-law, and desiring her for his own in spite of her rejection. 

Jane didn’t doubt something like that really had happened in this man’s life.  Perhaps the notion of gods and goddesses was the farthest extent of his delusion, just a fantastic backdrop to true to life events that he couldn’t face.  If that was the case, and if she were a follower of the psychoanalytic theory, she might think they were dealing with some kind of oddball Madonna-Whore complex.  Sif in the myths was known for her loveliness, which could translate to purity, which could mean that the patient was projecting his need for sexual satisfaction from his sister-in-law on a pure mythical being.  Delving further, maybe the whole reason he slipped himself into the Loki role was because of Sigyn, the Goddess of Fidelity.  He desired a stable and loving relationship, but because he couldn’t have it with the woman he wanted, he denied the existence of such love, of Sigyn, entirely, failing to realize the irony of his assertions.

That would all be fine and good if the power and complexities of the human psyche could fit into neat little boxes, where this was normal and that was abnormal, and if one could just separate the normal from the abnormal, all their problems would be solved.  A shame that it didn’t work like that in the real world.

“Please inform me when your mind has finished wandering so we can continue.”

The patient’s words had a ripping quality that dragged Jane back to earth by her ankle.  It tingled a bit as the thought came to her; just one more of those powers and complexities of the mind. 

Clearing her throat, Jane turned to a new page in her notebook, even though she had barely written anything on this new page. 

“Sorry about that,” she murmured.  She sat up a little straighter and cleared her throat.  “So you say that Thor was never married to Sif, and Sigyn was never married to you, Loki, because-“

“Because she _doesn’t exist.”_   The patient placed his hands on the table, like he did the last time during his outburst.  If Jane didn’t know any better, she’d say that was the exact same placement, too.  “I can tell you of a few more who are fantasy, since you are just so interested in hearing about it.  There is no Baldr, first of all.  If you planned to interrogate me on my cold blooded murder of poor innocent Baldr, I’d advise you to reconsider.”

Jane glanced at the page, through which she could see a backwards image of her list of questions.  She surreptitiously covered the column on Baldr with her hand.

“I see,” she said.  With her free hand she started playing with the cap to her missing pen.  “How about-“

“I have no children either, if that’s your next question,” he said.  Her next question was actually going to be about the myth of Sif’s hair, but that was also a good place to start.  “Hel is real in the sense that she presides over the Underworld—what you would call Hell— and typically presents herself in female form, but she is of no relation to me.  I’m grateful to say that I’ve never met her before, though there have been some close calls.”

Jane entered that into her mental notes.  Those ‘close calls’ could mean anything, though from their interactions so far, she didn’t peg him for suicidal.  That would require further examination and possibly more extensive monitoring while she wasn’t with him.  She scrawled out a memo to discuss that with Erik later on, using the coveted pen which she’d just now found under the sole of her shoe.

“I have never desired to end my life,” he said, stilling Jane’s hand, “at least, not of my own volition.”

Jane re-read her notes, perfectly legible to anyone with eyesight good enough to see across a table.  Maybe she should take lessons from Erik in doctor’s scrawl.  She moved the notepad under her arm, lowering her head so that her long hair formed a curtain.  He had no outward reaction, but to lace his fingers together and blink his eyes once or twice.  He was disappointed that he wasn’t scaring her anymore.

Not that he ever had.

“But you have wanted to,” she said.

His eyes darkened.  “Is that really a matter you’d like to get into, _Dr. Foster_?”

He said that like it was a hilarious joke to him, but it was an improvement from their last session (albeit a small one) and so for now, she wouldn’t complain.  He shouldn’t think she’d let it slide a second time, though. 

He slid his long body to the edge of his seat, rendering them nearly eye level.  His legs were likely spread, though the solid grey table prevented Jane from seeing.  His head was lolled back with his hair out of his eyes, which were lidded like he was going to fall asleep at any given moment.  He painted a picture with his body and posture, and that picture said ‘I could not be more bored with you if I tried.’  He wasn’t even trying to hide it. 

Not that he ever really could.  Jane’s super receptors had struck again.  She could see the beads of sweat on his brow and the subtle, but ever present twitching of his fingers.  Behind that collected façade that he so carefully cultivated was something infinitely more visceral just waiting to break through his barriers.  He was like a docile animal in that sense, much as the comparison made her stomach turn (patients were not animals, patients were human beings).  There was something caged back, something he was desperate for her not to see, and through that desperation, she had seen it all.

 “I think you should feel safe talking with me about it if you want to.”  She spread out her arms, revealing the notebook.  “I just want you to know that if the time ever comes that you do want to talk about it, I’m here to listen.”

He nodded as she spoke, but he didn’t buy a word of it.  She could have the people skills of a brick and still see that.

“You’re here to listen, hm?”  For the next few moments, he was deep in thought.  “I have a question for you, if you don’t mind me asking.”

“Not at all,” Jane answered, sitting back a little herself.  “Fire away.”

“Why do you believe that I am not who I say I am?”

It was a question Jane had and hadn’t seen coming.  All things considered, this was a well-functioning.  He maintained a strong awareness of his surroundings, and outside of his delusions, he was an eloquent speaker and almost too smart for his own good. 

That said she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was too much too soon.  Never before had a patient openly challenged her like this.  Darcy might have counted, but her belligerence stemmed directly from her lack of awareness.  Everything to her was just another part of the game.  This patient wasn’t like that.  Every word out of his mouth was practiced, and real.

“Have I struck you dumb at last, Doctor?”

Jane started.  She thought she saw a smile flit by.  If she was right, it had to be the most smug, superior thing she’d ever seen from a patient, or anyone else for that matter.

“No, I was just…” Jane’s hand curled into a fist.  “Well, why don’t you tell me why I should believe that you’re who you say you are?”

He tsked.  He actually _tsked_ her.  “Dr. Foster, don’t deflect the question back on me.  Where I come from, such things are a mark of weakness.”

“I see, and can you tell me anything about where you came from?”

“Now you are changing the subject.  Does your cowardice know no bounds?  I’m almost disappointed in you.”

“Almost?”

He grinned.  “This is all a game for you, isn’t it?  You’re trying to make me slip up.”

The thought had crossed her mind, it was true.  It was to Jane’s great irritation that she had to admit (to herself of course), that he was more right than wrong this time.

Unless he was the one trying to trip _her_ up.

“You still haven’t answered me,” the patient said, completely assured in his victory and probably knowing full well that there was still another twenty minutes left for her to deal with him.

“I believe that you believe it,” she said, business-like.  “I believe that you are very intelligent and coherent.  I don’t think that you’ve broken completely from reality-“

“That puts you one huge step above the good doctor Selvig.”

“-but that doesn’t mean I believe your story either,” she finished.

The patient frowned at her.  “That’s a bit blunt, isn’t it?  I had pegged you for more subtle than that.”

“Only for patients that approach works on,” Jane said.  “You, I think, require something more direct.  Am I wrong?”

His shoulders shook with suppressed laughter, the contagious kind.  Jane’s mouth twitched at the sides several times, dying to form into a grin that rivaled his Cheshire cat look.  Jane wondered if maybe they should stop for the day.

“Dr. Foster,” the patient said when the moment had passed.  “If I might go off-topic for a moment, may I just say that you are looking very well today?”

Jane furrowed her brow.  Where the hell had _that_ come from?

“Er- thank you.”

“I mean it, really.  Your face has much better color today, and it looks fuller.  I trust you’ve slept well these past few nights, yes?  No bad dreams?”

“No,” Jane said, a bit too forcefully.  It wasn’t quite his fault that his redundant questioning _again_ triggered the memory of that dream, but she almost wished it was.  It would have felt so good to blame some of her current troubles on taking his case in the first place. 

“Are you certain of that?” he asked.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know,” he answered honestly (and he clearly didn’t like being honest about this).  “For everything I do know of you, much remains a mystery.”

That couldn’t be hard since they don’t know each other at all.  Jane feels the ticking of the clock in the next room, more than she can hear it.  The minutes have dragged on until they feel like ten years each, but if Jane was keeping time correctly, she’d been in there long enough to call it an hour.  When she actually stood up and looked, it had only been fifty six minutes.  Oh, well.  Close enough.

“Okay,” she said, brushing off her pants.  “I think we’ve covered a lot of ground today.”

“Have we?”

Jane made the educated decision to ignore that.

“I’ll see you next Tuesday.  Until then, Dr. Selvig asked me to leave a short questionnaire for you with the orderlies.  They’ll give it to you when you’re back in your room.  Please answer every question to the best of your ability.”

“I thought I wasn’t allowed writing utensils.”

“They’ll be watching you while you work.”

Jane got her coat from over the chair and flung it over her arm.

“You’d best be served putting that on,” he said.  “I hear it’s a little nippy out.”

Jane ignored him a second time.  Her hand wrapped around the doorknob and she turned it one inch.

“Dr. Foster?”

It was the first time he said it that didn’t sound like a taunt.  If she didn’t know better, she’d call it a plea.  Whatever it was, her curiosity was piqued.  She looked back at him.  He hadn’t yet tried to stand up.  Erik said he’d finally learned to wait for his escort.

“Yes?” Jane asked.  She kept her hand on the door.

“I just wanted to say…” he paused and waited a beat.  “I’m very sorry about Ms. Lewis.”

Of course, it was common knowledge around the hospital what Darcy had done.  Things like this were never kept secret.  A suicide attempt took high precedence whenever they happened, and it didn’t help that Darcy was already infamous for her schizophrenic outbursts.  Add in the fact that orderlies were known to talk, and it was really no wonder that the patient knew about what happened.  The only thing surprising about it was that he’d found out so soon.  Normally, these things took at least three days to make it through the grapevine to the specialized patients.

Jane knew all of that in her logical heart of hearts, but she couldn’t stop the small, active illogical side of herself that was sounding the alarms.

Something was off about all this, she just knew it.

 “Thanks,” Jane said, swallowing hard, “that’s kind of you to say.”  She started to leave again.

 “It’s truly terrible, what she did,” he said leisurely.  “Taking all that mind altering medication at once should have killed her.”

Jane’s hand tightened, so hard that her knuckles cracked.  An imprint of her fingers would be left behind on that door, and they would carry with them a distinct cold feeling that none after her could describe.

It made sense that he knew what Darcy.  Everyone did.

To know how Darcy did it… only she and Erik, and the doctors on staff at that hospital, were supposed to know that.

_So how did he?_

Jane faced him fully where she hadn’t before, and she could no longer mask the tremors coursing through her.

“What did you say?” She sounded so weak, too.

“I’m just saying that she’s lucky.”  His mouth curled into a grin that Jane could only call sinister.  “One could almost call her survival… _divine intervention_.”

Jane’s hand sought the knob.  When had she even let go?  She found it, and she sailed out the room with the patient mugging behind her.  Outside, she didn’t see if Erik was still there waiting for her.  She headed for the elevator, her fingers clutched around her notebook and the sign out sheet she was supposed to return to the triage nurse, the one she just walked by. 

(She’d be back in her office before she realized she’d forgotten her pen.)

The elevator dinged with Jane ten feet away from it.  She picked up the pace, only to slow when the doors slid open, and those three tall orderlies stepped out, laughing together like there was anything at all laugh about. 

“Hey!”  Jane’s shout stopped them in their tracks.  “I saw you hanging around the John Doe’s session room the other day.”

The men all looked at each other, two at a time in all possible combinations.  Never once did it reach their thick heads that they should say something before Jane got really mad, and then it was too late.

“Look, I don’t know what you three are doing lazing around on the job and trading gossip, or how you could have found out about what happened to Darcy, but when it starts to sabotage the recovery of _my_ patients, it becomes _my_ problem.  You three do not want this to be my problem, you understand?”

“Uh… I think so,” said the one on the far left, who looked the most befuddled out of all of them.  He glanced at his friend on the right, who smirked.

“I think you need some Prozac, lady,” he said under his breath.

“What was that?”  Jane got right in his face.  “Do you want to lose your job?”

“No, Ma’am, no I don’t,” said the orderly, rolling his eyes.

“Look, we don’t know anything about the Lewis girl, honest,” said the one in the middle.  “And we’d never talk about it to a patient if we did.”

He sounded so honest, and the other two orderlies looked so bored, and Jane was so spent of anger and aggravation and every other kind of emotion.  All she could manage was a wordless shout, and then she stalked passed the three, leaving them to snicker and spin their fingers around their temples in her wake.  As she entered the elevator, her eyes darted in all directions, as if he would be there wherever she looked.

There in the shadows, watching her.


	4. Chapter Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Believe it or not, chapter four is here! Only one more to go. What do you think will happen?

Jane took her work in her bedroom that night.  The kitchen was a little too dark for her liking.  Those lightbulbs needed to be changed, and she was thinking about buying some thinner curtains.  A little more sunlight would do her good; give her skin some color and all that.

She pushed aside the blankets and arranged her files, pens, and tape recorder all in a line that was neat where the rest of the room was cluttered.  When she had some free time, she’d have to consider getting rid of a few things, such as all that old clothes she didn’t wear and more, or those books she didn’t read. 

Past experience told her that it wasn’t going to happen, something would come along to distract her for another few months, and then she’d promise herself again that _next time_ , she’d do the cleaning.  It was always next time, but she could still hope.

She started with an older patient, one she’d been seeing for a couple of months.  He suffered from bipolar disorder and tried to attack his wife with a golf club before coming to his senses and checking himself into the hospital.  He was one of those patients Jane truly felt for.  He wasn’t a bad guy.  He just couldn’t control himself when the fits came.  He never remembered what he did when it was over.  It was like something entered his body, a foreign entity invading his senses, inserting its hands and feet into his and using his body like a puppet.  When he opened his eyes again, all he could see around him was destruction, of his home and his family, his wife curled up into a ball crying, and he never knew just how much of it was himself and how much was the monster.  Whatever was inside of him, controlling him like this, it could be nothing but.

He was an eloquent man, Mr. Folan.  She could see how he supported his family as a writer all those years.

She put down his file and her notes with a few changes, mostly grammatical errors that made her want to gag.  She grabbed her tape recorder and ran down the list of recent files.  He was the third down, from three days ago.

 _‘This is Jane Foster of Genial North Psychiatric-_ ’ Jane fast forwarded.  _‘-Mr. Folan, how are you feeling?’_

_‘Oh I’m fine.  As fine as I can be at least.’_

_‘And is there anything you wanted to talk about today?’_

_‘My wife came to see me.  She says she misses me.  She wants me to come home.’_

_‘You just might very soon.  You’re responding well to your medications, and you’ve been on your best behavior.’_

_“Yes, that’s wonderful.  I just…’_

_‘Just what, Mr. Folan?’_

_‘…what if the monster comes out again?’_

The rest of the recording was twelve minutes long.  Her sessions with Mr. Folan were always the quickest.  He’s one of the best patients she’s ever had, and the only one she’d argue never needed to be at Genial North in the first place.  He kept himself trapped by a fear of himself, but over time, Jane knew they would break him of it.  He’d be back at home cranking out books and short stories before the month was out.

At the end of the tape, Jane clicked on the next file.  Another voice that wasn’t Darcy’s or Ian’s or the patient’s filtered through the speakers, and then another after that, and another after that.  Jane’s notebook lost another three pages.  Notes were scribbled at random like thoughts in a journal.  She wasn’t bound to look at them again tomorrow.

She was down to two files.  She’d never brought home any for the patient.  He was technically still Erik’s responsibility.  Between Darcy and Ian, she would have preferred to listen to Ian again.  Her files of Darcy weren’t even current.  The last one dated a month before her last outburst, and none of them were fun to listen to.  But fun was never in the job description, and Jane’s fingers had different ideas about how she should focus her energies.  She found herself flipping through Darcy’s files.  The earliest was from Jane’s first session with her, back before all the drugs were out of her system.  That was when Darcy never made jokes.

Jane pressed play. 

She didn’t bother skipping the intro this time.  She let it run its course and mouthed along with the words.  _‘This is Dr. Jane Foster of Genial North Psychiatric.  The time is…’_

The first half of the tape was uneventful.

_‘Darcy, my name is Dr. Foster.  Do you want to talk to me?’_

_‘…’_

_‘Take your time.  Don’t rush.’_

_‘…’_

_‘Do you want to talk about your mother?’_

_‘…’_

_‘Do you want to talk about your mother’s friends?’_

_‘…’_

_‘Do you want to talk to me, Darcy?’_

_‘…’_

At the fifteen minute mark, another voice joined hers.

_‘Darcy, what was that?’_

There was a small burst of static.  Not an uncommon occurrence.  Jane had been saying for months that they needed to upgrade the recording equipment.

_‘Don’t wanna… be here…’_

_‘Where would you rather be, Darcy?’_

Ten more seconds of silence.

_‘Home… with mom…’_

Jane fisted her pillow.  At the time, if she remembered correctly, she had snapped her pencil in half and needed to write out the rest of her notes with a stub.  That woman Darcy called a mother was lucky she was no longer alive and never met Jane.  She would have gotten something much worse than alcohol poisoning.

_‘Your mother isn’t around anymore, Darcy.  Do you remember that?’_

_‘No… she leaves sometimes… she’ll come back.’_

_‘She won’t come back, Darcy.  You need to understand that.’_

Twenty more seconds of silence.  Darcy’s breathing became shallow.

_‘I know… I know… never see her again… won’t see anyone again… trapped here… trapped… we’re all trapped… every one of us…’_

The tape stuck.  Jane clicked her tongue and lifted the recorder over her head.  She fiddled unsuccessfully with the buttons and the speaker.  She slapped the side as a last resort, and the machine whirred back to life.  It had skipped the next three and a half minutes, to the part where Darcy became incoherent.  Her words slurred and stopped making sense.  With the volume up, her gibberish rang louder and clearer than when Jane had been in the room with her.

Something on the recording stuck out that Jane hadn’t heard before.  She rewound the tape ten seconds and listened again, the speaker pressed so far into her ear that it started to ring, but she heard it again.  It was exactly what it sounded like.  Three more listens confirmed it. 

Jane reached for her pen.  She fished under her pillow where they sometimes slipped, but all she found was smooth satin that needed to be changed and the bottom end of a lacy throw.  Jane threw the pillow aside, but her aim was terrible when she wasn’t looking.  She heard a crash, and the whine of a broken tape.  Jane shut her eyes and cursed herself.  Her tape recorder was on the floor, next to the wall it had hit.  It was outwardly fine, but the screen was cracked on one side, and the same five seconds  of audio played on repeat.

_‘…that’s it… there’s nothing real… that’s it… there’s nothing real… that’s it… there’s nothing real…’_

Jane stretched out her arm, grasping for a hint of thin, cylindrical plastic.  She brushed it once, then twice, and then she pushed herself forward in one quick thrust to grab it.  Clasped between her middle and index finger, Jane dragged the wayward pen up to the surface, gently pulling herself back into a comfortable position with as little pressure on her aching neck as possible.  That was what she got for sleeping at the kitchen table.

She would have felt much better if she didn’t need to get her three hundred dollar tape recorder fixed.  Good thing there was a tech guy two floors up who didn’t charge much.  Jane would give him a call in the morning.  Right now, she had to quickly write this down, try to turn the tape recorder off—and shove it between some bath towels if she couldn’t—and get some much needed sleep.

She raised the pen to paper, wrote three letters, and stopped.

She looked over the pen in her hand, the light blue plastic that bore the name of a cheap motel she’d stayed at once, the same pen she carried around everywhere she went as something of a good luck charm.

The same pen she thought she’d left behind at her session with the patient.

The skipping tape was loud in her ears, louder with each repeat, and Jane heard every one of them through her sharp, sensitive ears as she stared at the pen.

_‘…that’s it… there’s nothing real…’_

_‘…that’s it… there’s nothing real…’_

_‘…that’s it…there’s nothing real…’_

**

“I keep having nightmares about what Darcy could have done.  Sometimes she’s pulling pills out of the cabinets, other times she on the floor…” Jane stared a hole into her half full cup of coffee.  “God, am I going crazy?”

“No, you’re not crazy,” Erik said.  He was back in fatherly mode after an hour and a half of ‘Goddamn this bureaucratic board I can’t take it.’  Monthly board meetings always did that to him.  “You’re just involved.  You’ve gotten close to Darcy.”

Jane glanced at the next table over.  Three doctors traded jokes and funny patient stories over sandwiches and cola.  They were the only other people around.  The courtyards weren’t typically packed this time of year, even during lunch hours.  Jane had thought she and Erik would be the only ones brave enough to be out here on a ‘semi-warm’ day in January with only their mittens and winter coats to protect them.  She was wrong.

“Try to speak up a little next time.  I don’t think they heard you.”  Jane eyed the other doctors again.

“I mean it as a good thing, Jane,” Erik said.  “Some patients need more than objectivity from their doctor.  What Darcy needs is someone she can trust and confide in, someone who won’t judge.  She needs a friend, more or less.”

Jane stirred a fourth sugar packet into her coffee.  It just wasn’t sweet enough today.  “I wouldn’t say she’s my friend.  Ian’s her friend, I’m just her doctor.”

“But you’re getting through to her because you act like a friend.”

 “Yeah, I’m getting through to her alright.  That’s why she had her stomach pumped two days ago… and, you know, she was awake when I went to see her yesterday.  I wanted to talk to her about what happened, but do you know what the first thing out of her mouth was?”

Erik shook his head.

“’Where’s my mom?’ she asked me.” Jane slammed her hands onto the table.  Her palms stung, and those other three doctors were definitely staring at her now, but at least Jane felt a little better.  “I just don’t understand where all the love for that woman is coming from.”

“It’s her _mother.”_

“Yeah, sure, her mother.  Her mother, who gave her drugs and let her boyfriends’ use her for sex.  Who tried to smother her to death and only stopped because all the vodka she drank kicked in at the right moment.  I’m supposed to just ignore all of that while Darcy is-“

“Darcy is a very sick girl.”  Erik gave her his most severe look.  “You know that, Jane.  She doesn’t see things the way you and I do.”

Jane shrank under his gaze.  It had been working on her since she was seven, and even at thirty, nothing had changed.  He could still make her feel like that little girl in pigtails who spilled grape juice on the rug if he needed to.

“I know,” Jane said.  She reached for her coffee and found nothing but air.  A hint of brown out the corner of her eye got her to look down, where a puddle of her coffee was spreading over her shoe.  She probably shouldn’t have hit the table.  “I’m just… ever since Darcy did what she did, I feel like everything around me is crumbling.  I’ve worked so hard to help her.  I thought I was finally reaching her, and now this!  Has everything I’ve done been for nothing?”

“Don’t talk like that,” Erik said firmly.  “You think I haven’t dealt with this before?  I know exactly what you’re going through right now.  I know how easy it is to blame yourself, but you can’t give in to it.  None of this was your fault.”

He pressed something into her hand, the last of his box of scones from the local donut shop.  She’d had no appetite since yesterday, but the sight of the sugary bun brought wetness to the corners of Jane’s mouth.  She took a bite, savoring the taste, and she did feel a little better when it was gone, if only just.

“Thanks, Erik,” she said, resting her elbows on the table.  “I guess I just didn’t get enough sleep last night.  I’ve been way too stressed out.”

Erik fiddled with a piece of wrapping.  His fingers flexed in and out.

“It’s not just about Darcy, is it?”

Jane, who had been watching his hands trying to decipher their meaning, had a moment of understanding and apprehension.  He laced his fingers together, ending the infernal fidgeting.  Jane could’ve thanked him for that alone.

“Jane…” That wasn’t a good tone.  “I know I’m asking a lot from you, bringing you this patient.  He’s very difficult.  I’m still not sure that he isn’t dangerous.”

He searched Jane for all that she could never hide even if she wanted to.  The truth was that she’d been hoping the conversation would turn in this direction, she just hadn’t known how to bridge the gap.  Erik didn’t know about the rest of Jane’s dreams.  That after Darcy fell, blue in the face and cold, a dark shadow appeared over her.  It was tall and thin with burning red eyes, and it grinned a horrible, demonic grin.  She thought she heard it speak to her, but the words were too far to hear, always just out of reach.  If she could hear them once, she thought, maybe she would finally understand.

Or maybe she just needed to use some of those vacation days she’d been hoarding.

“I don’t think he’d hurt me,” that was the truth, “and I’m not afraid of him,” that was a lie, “but I am starting to wonder if there’s a line between a patient’s health and a doctor’s, and where that line should be drawn.”

She made a fist, one that tensed and relaxed in quick motions, as Erik’s larger, warmer hand came to rest over it.  She looked up into eyes that were so much like her father’s.   She wondered if Erik knew that.

“It’s drawn right here,” he said.

**

Jane walked into the session room.  She was the pinnacle of detachment and poise, looking over the patient like he was nothing more than an ugly potted plant.  Nothing in her stance indicated that she’d needed twenty minutes front from of the mirror in her office, followed by another ten minutes in the bathroom, to perfect it.  If she was doing this right, he would never notice a thing.

The first thing he did when she shut the door behind her was cross his arms over his chest and smile.  He noticed.

 _‘No, no he doesn’t, Jane,’_ she told herself before she could falter.  _‘That’s just your nerves talking.  He can’t read you.’_

“Good morning, Dr. Foster,” he said.

Jane nodded a little as she sat down.  She let her bag slide off her arm to the floor, the strap still looped around her wrist for easy access.  This wouldn’t take long.

“I just want to let you know that after today, you’re going to be back in the primary care of Dr. Selvig.  This will be my last session with you.”

The smile vanished.  In its place was something unreadable.

“I don’t believe that,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter what you believe or don’t believe,” Jane said, refusing to entertain even a notion of indigence for what he just said.  “Now, I don’t have any questions for you, so if you’d like to get a day off from therapy, now’s your chance.”

He played with the edge of a sheet of paper, had been since before Jane stepped into the room.  He let it lay flat and slid it to her.

“I thought we were to go over this.”

Jane looked down at Erik’s questionnaire.  His flawless handwriting awoke a twinge of envy in her gut, and made her want to laugh for reasons she’s couldn’t adequately explain.

“Dr. Selvig will talk to you about that next week,” she said.

“I’d rather talk to you.”

“That isn’t your call.”

A moment of unbroken eye contact passed, and then he took the paper back.  Jane’s breath of relief was cut short when he picked it up and read the first line.

“’What are your plans upon being released from Genial North?’  A bit of a misleading question, isn’t it?” he looked at her.  “How many of your patients really expect to leave here?  It can’t be that many.”

“I can’t tell you that,” Jane said.  “So if that’s all-“

“That’s never all.”

Jane had been in the process of standing.  His voice triggered an impulse to sit back down, and so Jane had to grip the table to prevent an ungraceful fall to the floor.  She steadied herself, brushing strands of hair out of her face and trying not to look and see if he was grinning again.  So much for being indifferent.

It was just one more on the long list of reasons why this had to end.  This man, whoever he was, brought out all kinds of thoughts and feelings that were alien to Jane, much he wanted her to believe they weren’t.  Though he hadn’t claimed to know her again since their first meeting, his general behavior remained entirely too casual.  He acted like they were old friends instead of a doctor and a patient, and the more flustered Jane became the more at ease he seemed to be.  Almost as if disorder gave him cheap thrills.

Not that this was anything for Jane to speculate on.  She wasn’t his doctor anymore.

“Okay, what else do you have to say?” she asked, her posture and tone conveying the message, ‘and make it fast.’

The patient consulted the paper.

“Do you feel that your worldview has improved since arriving at Genial North?’  I can’t decide if this is really mean to help me or if Dr. Selvig is looking for an ego boost.”

“How did you answer the question?”

“I left it blank.  There were much better uses for the ink.  I had quite a bit to say about the quality of the staff and my doctors.”  He pushed the paper back to her.  “Would you like to read it?”

Jane wanted to look away, but her eyes betrayed her.  She caught a hint of his writing, but his cursive was impossible to make out with just a quick skim.  She did see her name a few times, under questions such as ‘How do you think we can improve the quality of your treatment?’ and ‘Briefly describe your relationship with your primary doctor.’

“I requested extra sessions with you,” he said helpfully.  “I thought it might be beneficial to us both.”

Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, but the beginnings of a splitting headache had already come to pass.

“Was I mistaken?”

Jane dropped her hand.  “It’s a little late for that.  Dr. Selvig is already making arrangements to transfer you back under his care.”

“I thought I was never truly out of his care.”

“He’s rearranging his schedule to make room for you.  The point is that I am not going to be seeing you again.  Do you understand that?”

Her nails dug into her skin, leaving behind curved red imprints.  The pain did nothing for Jane except to increase the rush of her blood flow.  Every second this man looked at her like she was little more than an ornery pet throwing a temper tantrum for food, she squeezed tighter, and cared less.

“I see,” he said, pursing his lips.  “Then perhaps this is the last day.  Please forgive my impertinence.”

She wasn’t about to forgive him for anything, but if it got her out of here faster, she would happily -pretend.  She un-balled her fists and used her remaining strength of will to force a smile that hopefully resembled something pleasant.  A mirror would’ve been helpful right now.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice clipped and tired.  “Your next session with Dr. Selvig will be on-“

“I never consented to seeing Dr. Selvig again.”

Jane was just about to find a nice clean spot on the wall to knock herself out with.  Being dead from the neck up for a while would undoubtedly be preferable to this. 

“What was that?” she asked.

“I believe my meaning is clear.  I shall endeavor to be plainer.” He leaned forward.  “I have no intention of attending another session with Dr. Selvig or anyone else.”

He returned to his seat, a little lower down if Jane was seeing right.  He sure did love that spread out stance of his, almost like he had something to prove.

 _‘More Freud,’_ Jane quipped to herself.  Keeping a sense of humor was important in times like these.

“That’s not your decision to make,” she said.

“What if I edited my responses on this paper to request no further therapy at all?”

“Your request would be denied.”

“Then why bother asking such insipid questions in the first place?”

He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it in the corner, away from the wastebasket.  It sailed by the side of Jane’s head, prompting no from her.  He wasn’t the first, nor would he be the last, to complain about the logic behind Erik’s ‘survey’ method.  To allow the patient a little control over their lives inside the hospital (not to mention potentially get information on patient abuse at the hands of staff) was to prepare them for their eventual (hopeful) return to society.  It was all about acting humanely in Erik’s view.  After dealing with this guy, Jane was starting to think he should be more selective in using it.

“You can ask him yourself at your next session,” she said.

“I have already said I will not see him.”

“And I’ve told you, you don’t have a choice.”

He gave a boisterous laugh.  It was unlike anything Jane had ever heard from him and it didn’t suit him at all.

“Oh, you have no idea, Dr. Foster, no idea at all.”  His eyes shined.  “Everything that happens here is up to me.”

“Because you’re a god?”

His eyebrows shot up.  “I do believe that is the first time you’ve been so direct about it.”

“I can afford to be now.  I’m no longer your doctor.”

She got up to leave.  She had long since said her peace and only stuck around this long because he was distracting her.  Logic dictated that it was all for personal gratification; he would have done this to any doctor, be it her or Erik or Betty or anyone else, so long as he could rile them up and make them squirm.  It still niggled her, though.  She needed to go before it niggled any harder or she might just decide to stay and find out what it was.

“Why are you leaving?”

 Jane kept walking.  “Our time is up.”

“You’ve barely been here ten minutes.”  She heard his chair push out.  “And you have misunderstood my meaning.”

His shadow crawled over her.  It was easy in moments like this to forget that he wasn’t considered a dangerous subject.  Being a special case didn’t automatically earn you a chain on the ankle or a straitjacket, not if you were a star patient when more than one person was around.  His form covered hers completely.  It was really unfair how much taller he was than her.

“I understood you perfectly,” she said.  “This is the end of my sessions with you.  That means our time together is over.”

“Well, you’re right about one thing,” he said.

Jane took a deep breath.  In another minute, her fist was going to fly into his face and knock all of his teeth out, consequences be damned.  She’d happily take the write-up and whatever else they tried to throw at her.  After almost two weeks of putting up with this, she’d earned it, and so had he.

“If you are so desperate to know,” she hissed, “I’m leaving because being your doctor is emotionally exhausting.  It may be horrible of me to say, but my mental health is more important to me than yours, so it’s better if we quit while we’re ahead, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Quite.”

Jane started, her prearranged retort dying on her lips and her arms falling limp to her sides.  She chanced a look over her shoulder.  He was leaning against the table without a care, and that table wasn’t secured to the floor.  It should’ve been moving under his weight.

“Surprised?”  He didn’t wait for a response.  “You shouldn’t be.  Your state of being means more to me than anything, and there have been times where I’ve come far too close to losing you.  That’s why it fills me with joy to see you now, so much the woman I used to know.  I know that it was worth it to come here after all.”

He reached for her hand and took it.  Her skin was soft and warm though inside Jane was nothing but ice.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, with no feeling behind it.

His touch had awakened something deep inside of her, so deep that Jane could barely recognize it.  All at once she wanted to scream and curse at him until her throat was hoarse, she wanted to fall to her knees and beg him for mercy, she wanted to stay still and let him touch more of her.  No part was stronger than the other and the battle was devastating.

Four words rang out in her head that made no sense.

_‘What have you done?’_

What _had_ he done?

Jane jerked away.

“Nothing,” she said aloud to herself.  He wasn’t meant to hear.  “Nothing.  This is nothing.  _Nothing.”_

She clutched the hand he’d held to her chest.  His eyes were downcast, his fingers twitching like he longed to hold it again.

“I didn’t hurt you…?” 

He took one step.  Jane rushed for the door.

“No,” she said with a wild shake of her head.

“Jane, please, let me explain-“

“No!”

She flew out the door.  She stopped at the threshold of an empty hall.  The receptionists had chosen a brilliant time to go on their lunch break.

“Don’t say another word!” Jane pointed an accusing finger at him.  “I don’t want to hear it.  I’ve had enough of this, do you hear me?  I don’t know you and you don’t know me and this.  Is.  Over!”

Jane ran, passed the few apathetic personnel that had remained to roam the halls, and she didn’t stop for anything, not even when she realized that she’d forgotten to lock the door.

**

Someone stood in her office door.  Jane looked up to see Betty over sections of her uncombed hair.  She’d been raking her hands through it for so long that her scalp was numb.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Jane’s desk was a disaster the likes of which would make her apartment look immaculate.  All her files on the patient were piled on top of the trashcan.  Jane knocked a ball of paper that was once a cover letter to the top, where it teetered for a moment and then fell to the floor by the filing cabinet.

“No,” Jane said.  She flicked her pen around in the absence of more paper.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jane flicked the next one harder.  It flew over the phone to the floor.  Now she had nothing.

“No,” she said again.

Betty sighed.  “Well, you know I’m around if you need to talk.  It doesn’t have to be right now.  How about next week we go out on the town for some drinks?  We could check out hot guys.”

Jane laughed in spite of herself.  Trust Betty to be there, helping her up when she was down.  She didn’t know what she’d ever do if they’d transferred her to the bigger hospital instead of this one. 

She hoped they would get that night out away from work, long after Betty said goodbye and left for the night.  A couple of days of throwing herself into work, followed by a weekend spent hitting the night scene, getting drunk, and possibly getting a date with some handsome, non-crazy stranger was just what she needed.  Especially that last one.  It felt like it’d been centuries since she last had sex.  Eventually, she might even forget about the patient, and stop hearing his voice in her head all the time.

Because she did still hear him, when no other sound was present.

And she still felt his hand on hers, warm where she was deathly cold.

And she still heard that voice that sounded just like hers, screaming endlessly.

_‘What have you done?’_

_**_

Jane threw her coat aside and walked over a carpet of fallen magazines and junk mail to the couch.  She grabbed the remote, turned off the Harry Potter movie playing on HBO, and sank down with her feet in one of the file boxes.  She threw a hand over her face, blocking out the moon and stars.  With the TV off, it was the only light source left, and on better days she would enjoy having them to watch in her free time after work.  They were like beautiful white beads, a reminder of childhood dreams long forgotten.

Tonight, though, anything that cast a heavenly glow made her stomach roll.  She needed total darkness for five or six hours if she wanted to get up tomorrow.  She pulled her feet—still enclosed in loafers—up and out of the mess of papers, knocking the first few out of the box and leaving scuff marks on the restored upholstery.  She was going to kick herself for that when she had to spend hours scrubbing the stain out until her hands were raw. 

She needed to empty her mind, to go back to those mind-numbing self-help books her mom used to read that talked about the power of meditation and positive thinking.  It was something about counting your blessings and not allowing negative impulses to weigh you down.  That, at least, was a good idea, but new age ideas never held up in Jane’s professional opinion. 

She closed her eyes and thought of peaceful winter nights in with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa.  She thought of lying in the grass with the stars overhead and a calm state of mind with which to enjoy them.  She thought of that night out with Betty, doing anything they wanted not related to work.  She thought of Darcy getting better, both physically and mentally.  She thought of a dreamless sleep that lasted for as long as she wanted.  No alarms to force her back to wakefulness before she was ready.

She thought of never walking into session room 8 ever again. 

She thought for so long that somewhere in all that thinking, she must have fallen asleep.  She opened her eyes and sat up to a much darker room.  The moon had changed positions, from the highest point in the sky to lower down.  Her watch read quarter to five in the morning.

“That worked better than I thought.”  Jane sat up on the couch, stretched her tired muscles, and let out the longest yawn of her life.

She turned on a few dim lamps.  LED was just going to make her headache come back.  She walked around to where the boxes were.  There they sat, side by side, stuffed with papers all bearing her name.  Jane sat, eyes glued to the rows of manila folders.  She grabbed the closest box.  Getting herself comfortable, she slid it between her legs and thumbed out the first of the files.

Within an hour, three boxes sat upturned and empty in the corner.  The fourth contained all the folders she had deemed worth keeping.  All the rest would be fed into the shredder and deposited in the trash as soon as the sun came up.  Jane carried the box into her tiny den (really a converted walk-in closet) and slid it into the corner behind the door.  She walked back to the living room, changing course at the last second to enter the kitchen.  There, she spent half of her barely touched bottle of dishwashing liquid restoring her dishes and bowls to a healthy shine.  They went neatly into the cabinet with the silverware, which she rearranged into sorted stacks of forks, knives, and spoons. 

The coats for the clothing drive went into a bag that was tied around the door of Jane’s den.  She took her day coat from the floor and smoothed out the creases.  She shook off a few dust bunnies and hung it by the neck on the empty rack. 

Jane stepped back to admire her work.  Admittedly, she hadn’t done much.  Her home was still a mess of grime and clutter, and now that she could see the rug, it was in bad need of a vacuum, but her kitchen sink was clear and her files were in order.  The air tasted sweeter already, like a new beginning.

She went to her room and sat at the edge of her bed.  Her eyes would not close and weren’t likely to for a while.  After everything the last few weeks, Jane was sure Erik wouldn’t mind covering for her if she took a sick day.  She could spend it tackling that closet after another ten hours of sleep.

It was open and gaping as ever.  Every time Jane looked at it, she thought she saw more boxes.  She’d probably be in Narnia before she got to it all.  At the very bottom was the purple shoebox.  The cover was misplaced, which was odd.  Jane hadn’t touched it in weeks, and she was pretty sure she’d put the lid back on correctly.

Shrugging, she sunk to the floor.  Knocking off the lid, she examined the box’s contents.  Nothing was out of place since the last time she looked.

 _‘Might as well get an early start on cleaning,’_ Jane thought, sizing up the intimidating towers of stuff long ago saved ‘for later’.

She took out the pages from Erik’s book.  She didn’t read more than a few words at a time and she definitely didn’t look anywhere near the illustrated rendition of Loki.  She would probably be well served staying away from all things Norse until this whole thing blew over.

Next, she removed the rubber band ball and threw it a few times in the air.  She caught it two times out of five and set it aside.  With it went the picture of her first crush, which she now recalled having clipped out of the school year book just above his name.  For the life of her, she couldn’t remember what it was.

Her old story was the last thing in the box, still folded up and pushed to the side out of sight.  Had it been brown construction paper instead of red, it would have blended right into the cardboard.  Jane picked it up by the corner edge.

_‘bzzz- it… there’s nothing real… that’s it… there’s nothing real…’_

Jane shrieked, and the box flew out of her hands as she stumbled back.  Her hands groped around the bed for the tape recorder, sitting precariously close to the edge where she’d been a moment ago.  She looked at the screen, tracing the lines of the cracks spreading out like a spider’s web.  There didn’t appear to be any new ones since this morning.

How it had gotten here was the question on Jane’s mind.  She’d been certain she left it in that pile of dirty towels when she left for work that morning.

‘I must’ve brought it here after I took the towels to the laundry bin,’ Jane thought.  It made sense, but it would be better if she had any recollection of even holding the thing recently.

She pressed a few buttons, and then hit it once or twice while it spat out those same five words a hundred more times.  This morning, it had been the only way to make it shut up for a while, but it didn’t look like that was going to work a second time.  Shoving it under the pillow for later, she went back to the task at hand: getting that paper out of the box and taking a breather from the pains of adult life.

The happy stick drawing of her seven year old self and her prince smiled up at her when she unfolded it, the hearts a blaring red in spite of the almost identically colored background.  She read the first few lines to herself.

 _‘Once upon a time, there was a beautiful girl who lived in a tiny village._   _She had lots of good friends, but what she really wanted was a handsome prince.  One day, a handsome prince came to the town, and he met the beautiful girl and they fell in love at first sight.’_

The more Jane read, the more her smile grew.

_‘The prince wanted to marry the girl, but then an evil wizard came and took her away!  So the prince traveled to the evil wizard’s house and beat him up with his sword.  And so the prince freed the beautiful girl and they got married.  And they all lived happily ever after.’_

_‘But that was not the end of the story.’_

Jane’s heart missed a beat.  She stared hard at the last line on the paper.  She read it over and over again and traced the wobbly lines of a new writer.  It was all still in her handwriting, but those were not the words she had written.

_‘The story continues long after the girl thought she found her happy ending.’_

Jane’s breathing grew erratic, and she made no move to stop and calm down.  Sweat pooled at the top of her forehead and dripped down, yet she kept reading.

_‘For a long time, she thought she was happy.  She thought she had it all: a prince, a kingdom, and infinite knowledge, but with such privilege came a price she wasn’t prepared to pay.’_

“What the hell is this?” Jane muttered.  She held the paper tight enough that her nails dug through the other side. 

_‘What the girl didn’t know what that the man she had married was not who he appeared.  She had been caught up in dreams of true love, of a life in the stars with all she could ever ask for, and a devoted prince by her side who would love her always, and dreams are not meant to last.’_

“No, no I didn’t write this.”

_‘Over time, they turned grey and nightmarish.  She grew older and wiser, and she saw more than she was able to bear.  She saw her love crumble under the weight of new responsibility and broken trust.’_

“I didn’t write this.”

_‘Her prince grew tired of her, and sought love from elsewhere.  He fell into the arms of his admirers and left the wife in the cold, her affections scorned and squandered.’_

“I didn’t write this!”

_‘He left her to face the ridicule of a populace who had never accepted her, never thought her worthy of them.’_

“No, no, no, no-”

_‘And while she suffered alone in her exile, the wizard suffered in turn.  He suffered the pain of his beloved, whom he would have given all that her prince should have, had he only the chance to do so.’_

“No, stop it.”

_‘He tried many times to make her see that he was the one she was looking for.  He was the one who would love her and cherish her, and give her everything she deserved.’_

“Stop it!”

_‘But she could never see it, would never see it.  Not unless the wizard took drastic measures.  To save her from this tormented waste of a life, he would have to-‘_

“NOOOOO!”

Jane’s hands ripped the paper to shreds, the pieces flying about like red confetti.  They clamped over her mouth as her body willed back the bile rushing to her throat.  Her feet moved one uneven backwards step at a time, taking her to the living room.  Her coat flew off the rack and onto her shoulders as she raced out the door, to the elevator, all the way to her car at the far end of the parking garage.  Her hands gripped the wheel, her feet stepped on the gas, and she sped out of the dark into the early morning light.

Back in her room, under the pillow, the tape recorder played one more time-

_‘..that’s it… there’s nothing real.’_

-and clicked off.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yep, this is the end.
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed the story, and look out for updates of my other in-progress fics.

The hospital's main building carried a haunted air in the hours after closing. The night staff would be half-asleep by now, the janitors long gone home for a few precious hours of rest. Jane drove against the sun through town, on a road that would be wall to wall traffic in another thirty minutes. She followed her well established path without a single conscious thought, her speedometer miles above the speed limit. She made sharp turns in all directions and swerved in and out of lanes on the deserted streets. Only a few had emerged from their boxy suburban homes to get the paper or water the grass. Not one of them stared after her.

Somewhere deep within Jane's psyche had to be her common sense, crying out with all the strength of a bedridden child that there had to be a logical explanation for all of this. Like a hallucination or drugs in the water. Maybe an angry ex-patient was enacting some kind convoluted revenge plot, gaslighting her until she could no longer function as a doctor or indeed as a human being. As far out as it sounded, it still made more sense than what the greater part of her was thinking.

Yet here she was, going sixty miles an hour in a twenty mile zone. The tattered remains of her good fortune worked just enough to keep the sirens from blaring, but it couldn't prevent the simultaneous sinking of Jane's gut and swelling of her chest as Genial North appeared, silhouetted on the horizon like a ghostly apparition.

The security guard took one glance at her ID and opened the gates, no questions or comments to speak of. Sometimes, doctors show up early to get extra work done or to plan for upcoming conferences. Jane doubted any of them were typically here a full three hours before their shift was to start, but that was the least of Jane's concerns. She found a parking spot close to the elevators and bolted. In her frenzied state, she may have forgotten to grab her key from the ignition, or she may have just dropped them somewhere by the tires. They weren't in her hand with her ID badge when she stepped off the elevator, that was all she knew.

The fourth floor was where most of the patients were kept, organized by name and security level. General patients—those with common conditions who were likely to only stay a few months came first. Jane passed Mr. Folan's room on the left hand side and didn't look in. Next were moderate level patients like Ian. His door bore the latest stick drawing that he'd done for arts and crafts. Jane caught it out the corner of her eye and she almost screamed. They looked way too familiar.

Next were the truly sick patients. Some of them cried out in answer to voices no one else could hear, others slept fitfully and rocked on creaky bedsprings. Darcy's door was wide open, her bed newly made and her belongings untouched.

Jane darted across the hall. The few night staff who remained on duty spared her not a glance, even if she almost ran into them. It was as if their eyes slid right by her, unseeing and unaware. Or perhaps they were the ones who weren't really there…

The room she wanted was at the very end of the L shaped hall. It was the final door at the end of the hall. The numbers, brass and emblazoned, shot out and stung Jane's eyes. The sunlight reflected off the metal handlebar into her face, blinding her unless she kept blinking. Her eyes opened and closed so fast that her vision became like that of an old fashioned film projector. It made her descent into the narrow, isolated hallway seem all the slower. Each step she took on her lead metal feet felt like one more step up a mountain, but somehow, someway, she reached the top. She pushed open the door and it gave like it wasn't even there.

She didn't know how she knew he'd be waiting for her, but when the door swung on ungreased hinges, creating a sound that grated on Jane to her bones, he was there, out of bed and garbed in uniform white pajamas. They looked ridiculous on him. That color was all wrong. He needed something darker.

Jane stood rooted at the spot, daring not to go in, but not wanting to be caught disturbing a patient she no longer had a right to see either. She was left at something of a standstill. The patient was over by the window, one leg hanging on the sill and looking out. He hummed a little song that Jane didn't recognize, in spite of a clawing, grasping voice in her head that told her she should.

It also told her to run.

"I knew you'd come."

The patient was not looking at her, could see nothing reflected back at him in the window expect the faintest outlines, and yet that was the tone he always used with her when he wanted her to feel small. It was so he could crush her underfoot.

He leapt gracefully off the window, like some kind of ballet dancer. His long body stretched out, first his legs and then his arms. There was a good three or four yards between them, yet Jane felt he could reach out and grab her without moving an inch.

"I shouldn't be here," she told him, or maybe she was telling herself. It was a stupid thing to say either way. She was a little late in the game to come back to her senses.

"And yet, here you are." His tiny laugh echoed. "I have to wonder why."

Jane wrapped her arms around herself, turning her body away and doing all she could to disappear from sight. This was what animals did to avoid hungry predators.

"You have no need to fear me," he said.

"I'm not afraid of you."

That laugh again. Louder this time; it bounced around the room.

"You have a great many fears." He started to walk to her. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. I know you've suffered in your life. I've born witness to much of it."

Jane shook her head, harder and harder the closer he came. Hard enough that her neck would break, or her whole head would fall off. At this point, it would be a mercy. She wouldn't be able to hear him anymore.

"Now, now, Jane," he said, and her name on his lips was like a curse and seduction all wrapped up in one big foreboding package. "I think it's high time we move past this nonsense."

"It's not nonsense," Jane said. She waved around the room and at the patient. "It's not nonsense. This-  _this_  is nonsense. All of this— You're trying to do something to me. You're trying to make me as crazy as you are!"

His hands found her face, stilling her body and forcing her to gaze into his eyes as deeply as he did hers. The look on his face was indescribable, but it bore signs of pain and regret and determination, and maybe a little humor.

"I don't think it's possible to be as crazy as I." A ghost of a smile played at his handsome features. Jane's next out of nowhere and highly unnecessary thought was that he'd look better if he got a haircut. "But you'll understand everything in just a moment."

He leaned in, his intent obvious. Jane gasped and wrenched away from her with a chocked cry. She pressed herself into the wall. A bedpan and five and a half feet was all the protection from him she had left.

"Don't touch me," Jane said, gulping back some much harsher words. "Don't you touch me again!"

He lifted his hands, palms out. "My apologies. That was much too forward. You are still in a delicate condition, though you have improved significantly since I last saw you." He took another step and moved the bedpan out of the way. "I said that I would not hurt you, and I meant it. I would sooner end my own life than lay a hand on you."

"Don't…" Jane's knees grew weak, bending outward as they came dangerously close to giving out. "Why are you doing this?"

He hunched over, meeting her at eye level. Before Jane could fight him, he took her hands in his. His thumbs rubbed circles into her cooling skin. Color returned in small bursts from his ministrations, and Jane was loathed to admit how his touch soothed her. Her whole body had fallen limp, held together by skin; her bones seemed to have vanished. She fell into him. His strong arms held her steady on her feet. Drawing them both to full height, he wrapped himself more fully around her, covering her view of the outside world and relative safety. All she could see now was him. All she could hear was the beat of his heart. All she could feel was the papery material of his pajama shirt, which seemed thicker and coarser than it was before. Her senses honed on him, shutting out everything else as a consequence. No longer did the dim ring of the hospital phone or the hushed voices of night workers glace her ears, and she couldn't see the light of the sun that should be getting brighter. The whole world was gone; only they two remained.

"I haven't held you like this in so long," he said, his chest vibrating against her cheek. "You're smaller than I remember."

Jane wanted to pull away. His words fueled a rage that ran through a feral side of her that she never knew she had, and in no uncertain terms, it wanted her out of here, and away from him. She would have listened, but powerful as the urge was, her heart wasn't in it. He took that need away from her. He was consuming her.

"You've never held me," she hiccuped, her final, futile defense coming in a wavering voice tarnished by the tears.

His chest rumbled with more of that laughter, terrible in its warmth and sincerity.

"Ah, Jane," he said. Soft fingers ran through her hair. "Always so stubborn, so intent on being right and having the final word. I had hoped I'd see that in you again."

If possible, he held her tighter. Jane didn't know why he bothered. She'd lost the ability to stop him ages ago.

His nose tickled the shell of her ear. "I knew coming here was a good idea."

She felt his lips, feather light on her skin. If she thought he would kiss her there, he was determined to prove her wrong. He rested his chin atop her head, allowing her to dry her eyes and take in more of his scent. It calmed her fraying nerves with the rest of him, and the knowledge that he wielded such power over her brought a whole new litany of anxieties to the forefront, only to be soothed in turn. It was a vicious, endless cycle that left Jane emotionally exhausted. She couldn't feel anything from the neck down. If he wasn't holding her so tightly, she didn't think she'd be able to stand.

"You're wrong," she mumbled, her words slurred with her mouth half covered. He pulled away, just enough that she could raise her head. She hated that she was still crying. "I  _am_  as crazy as you."

He smiled, and for the first time, there wasn't a trace of a smirk to be found.

"That's my curse, darling."

He brought a hand to her cheek, cupping it with a touch that belied the chaos lurking within him. That was the last thing Jane's formerly sharp mind could process before she let that go, too. A tiny whimper preceded her eyes fluttering closed, and his breath on her face as their lips met.

The world fell to pieces.

Jane saw next to nothing in the empty void, except faint moving pictures over the side of his head. They flared to life in a ball of white light that took the center of Jane's vision and grew out. From a pinprick to a ball to an enormous globe, it shut out the unending darkness.

And then, Jane saw  _everything_.

She saw herself in the dark desert nights with her notes and equipment waiting for something to happen in the sky.

She saw Erik at her side waiting with her, and Darcy—sweet, snarky,  _sane_  Darcy—sitting in the back with her Taser and iPod.

She saw the man she hit with her car charming her with his gentlemanly ways.

She saw him talk to her in the dead of night about the world he came from, and prove the very next day that he meant what he said.

She saw him leave in a flash of light, only to return years later in the same way.

She saw herself fight a war with him that destroyed half his family and made them close.

She saw them together, first in her home, then in his. That was right… he had to return unexpectedly, and she went with him.

Then she saw their wedding.

She saw herself on the throne of a true to life magic kingdom.

She saw the years pass like the turn of a dial. So many years; more than she ever should have known.

She saw the light fade little by little: of the city, of the sky, and in her eyes.

She saw the rise and fall of countless uprisings.

She saw the dawn of every war and the eve of every esoteric victory.

She saw her husband leave her arms, sparingly at first, then more and more through the years. Over the years, he would withdraw. He'd grow tired of her. Whatever love had joined them together was withered and dead.

She saw him turn his attentions to other women, forgetting all about the one who waited in their bed.

She saw the people betray her. They'd never cared for her from the start, but now that she'd lost the king's good favor, nothing could hold them back. She saw herself become a laughingstock.

She saw herself age, in spirit if not in body.

She saw herself run.

She saw herself cry.

She saw herself weaken.

She saw herself search in vain for a single pair of non-judgmental eyes, until the day she gave up and left the palace for good.

She saw all of it and more, and when she could see no more she looked away. She returned to her body and unleashed a scream that had been building for days, if not for years. She pushed with all her might and she fell away from him. She stumbled into a corner, wrapping frail arms around her legs. There was a mirror right there, but she couldn't look at it. She couldn't see herself right now, divest of a treacherous mask and back to an unreal reality.

"Thor…" she whispered. His smile burned in her mind's eye with a somber quality, like he was hurt that she'd forgotten his name for so long. "Thor…"

She heard a growl. It came from the man standing over her, his face twisted in a snarl that he seemed to want to hide for her benefit.

"Don't say that name," he snapped. His fingers flexed, not like he was going to grab her, but like he wished there was a particular man's neck there for him to strangle. "You always remember  _him_ first, don't you?"

She edged away, but as she had yet to regain feeling in her lower half, she had to content herself with sliding on her behind. She noticed too late that she was approaching the mirror. She could no longer hide from the mess that she was. Her clothes were mismatched, her hair was in knots, and her skin was pale grey. And it was all because of him.

She knew exactly who he was now.

This was the man who had tried to destroy her home out for his own sick purposes.

The man who had faked his death to usurp the throne, and then disappeared to parts unknown when his charade was over.

The man who couldn't show his face for  _five hundred years_ , only to return when Asgard was in dire straits, against an enemy who might have had the potential to end the realm eternal.

This was the man who had single-handedly ended that war, all in the name of Asgard's true king, or so he said.

The man Thor had been all too happy to see the good in again, and believe that he'd learned his lesson at last.

The man who had wormed his way into her life, first to mock her, then to befriend her, then to be the only one on that godforsaken realm who never looked at her like she was no better a pebble in their shoe.

The man whose arms she had cried herself to sleep in the first time Thor left her for another woman.

The man whose promises of a better life for them both she never took seriously. Not until he vanished without a trace the day she exiled herself from courtly life, only to return months later in the midst of a powerful storm to tell her that all would be well.

 _"I'm going to make you happy, Jane_ ," he said to her that day, his eyes an unnatural shade of blue.  _"Truly happy. You will never have a sad day again."_

"Loki," she said now, as she had said then, too. "Loki… what have you done?"

He got down on one knee, caressing her face with a soft hand that nevertheless burned her like fire.

"You know what I've done," he said. "I've saved you from your misery. I've taken the cruel old world that deserted us and remade it into something new. I've given us both a chance to find the happiness we deserve."

"No," Jane pulled away. She had to get away from him. As far away as possible. "No, I don't believe you."

"Jane, I know we've made some mistakes. I know that our previous lives haven't worked out the way I wished them to, but there has been a reason for all of it. All that we have suffered in search of that perfect life has led us to this place. It's right within our grasp, my love, I can feel it."

"Stop it, Loki!" She shrunk back as much as she could. It just wasn't enough. "You can't do this anymore. We have to go back-"

"Go back?" His eyes flashed. In an instant, Jane was on her feet. He bent over her and she could see all the different colors running through his veins, from smoky red to glowing blue. " _Go back?_  There is nowhere for us to go back to! Don't you understand what I've done for you, Jane? What I've done to  _myself-"_ his veins pulse red one more time, "-to give you all that he never could?"

"But I didn't ask for this!" she cried. "I may have hated Thor for what he did to me, but I never wanted this… this  _lie_  you've created."

"It's not a lie!" He shook her. "It is  _truth_ , Jane!  _We_ make it truth. Do not look me in the eye and say that you feel nothing for me. You want a life with me as much as I want one with you, and this is our only way of getting it."

"No, Loki, this isn't real. It was never real, and nothing you say or do is going to change that."

All the furniture in the room flew through the air and collided, bursting into splintered pieces that rained down upon them. They landed in a circle around Jane's feet, but not a single granule had found its way into her hair, or his for that matter. A circle of energy surrounded them, raising them inches off the ground, as the room and the hall and the sky outside all shifted and melded together, like a painting with the colors running.

"You are mistaken," he said. The melting background had lost all proper form and was unrecognizable. The voices Jane had counted as a tether to all that he tricked her into believing were long gone, if they'd ever been there at all. " _Everything_  I say matters here. This world is ours now, Jane, and it's as real as anything you've ever seen."

The circle closed in on them, invisible energy forcing Jane back into his embrace. She fought for as long as she could, but she had long ago given up trying to control magic. Some things just weren't science, she was sorry to say. Jane struggled regardless, as she had all the other times, and as she would every time that was to come.

"Loki," she begged him. "Please, no more. I can't take it anymore."

"I know," he said, with a kiss to her forehead. "You couldn't take it before. That's way I brought you here, to make you well again, to bring back the Jane I fell in love with. Now that all is well, I think I finally know how to make a lasting life for us."

"No, Loki, please-"

"Yes, this will be it. This time, we're going to get it right."

And then they were falling.

"NOOOOO!" Her voice merged with the roaring of the changing tides, gone in a flash and leaving her to nothingness. The decaying room shattered, her form unraveled. All was lost to her, but still she could think.

_'No! I won't let you do this. I won't fall for it again, Loki. I swear I won't!_

_'I have to remember it this time. I have to remember that there's nothing real… there's nothing real... there's nothing real!_

_'Don't forget, Jane, there's nothing real!_

_'Don't forget, Jane… Don't forget… Jane…_

_'Don't… forget…_

_'Jane…'_

_Jane…_

_Jane…_

_Jane? Hey, Jane? Wake up!_

"I said, wake up!"

Jane sat up in her desk, an ungraded test on stem cell cloning stuck over her eyes, so she could only see the fuzzy shadow of the person standing over her. She ripped off the test and read the first line. She instantly knew this was one of her 'not so overachieving' students. She'd deal with that later.

"I wasn't sleeping," she said, rubbing the sand from her eyes. "I was just resting before fifth period."

"Uh-huh," said Betty Ross, the new chemistry teacher, hired to replace an old retiree. "Well, if fifth period is what you're waiting for, you're a little late."

She displayed the time on her phone, and Jane took in the hour well after two in the afternoon with a plummeting heart.

"Oh God!" She stood up so fast that her chair turned over, and frantically gathered the stack of lesson plans on her desk that she should have gone over last night. "How did I mess up this badly?"

Betty shrugged. She was taking this much too lightly and Jane did not appreciate it.

"I guess field trip day will do that to you," she said.

"Yeah, field trip day," Jane repeated. She continued her mad scramble for another few seconds, only to pause in the middle of arranging practice tests. "Wait, today was field trip day?"

Betty pointed at the wall calendar, and the trail of black Xs that stopped right in front of the red starred day marked 'AQUARIUM FIELD TRIP.' It had a big circle around it with little squiggly lines forming another circle around the first one. This was the day Jane had been looking forward to as the day to finally get caught up on all the work the sixty something students in her three classes had handed in since Monday. Today was Wednesday. She liked to have everything ready by Friday.

"Oh…" Jane dropped the stack of papers. "Okay. My brain is not working today."

"Well, we all have those moments," said Betty.

"No, really," said Jane. "I just had the craziest dream where I was working in some kind of a mental hospital, and one of the patients was after me."

Betty winced. "That does sound pretty bad. Too many horror movies?"

"I don't watch things like that," said Jane as she grabbed her shoulder bag and stuffed her papers inside. Now that she'd calmed down, getting them organized was a cinch.

Betty waited by the door for her to finish packing up. Afterwards, Jane locked the door to her office next to the counseling center and across from the science hall, and together they entered the halls of Genial North high school.

"I just need to grab a few things in my classroom," Jane said.

She led the way to the back of the science hall. They passed the lab room where Betty taught her one class of the day. Just another few months, and the school board would graduate her up to two or three. Jane couldn't wait to share the workload with her.

They stopped in front of Jane's room. She let herself in and walked to the desk where her mess of pens and highlighters made a puzzle of finding just the set of red pens she wanted. She also grabbed a few blank memo pads and a fresh eraser. While she was there, she might as well get some stock for home. She was always losing things in that bottomless pit she called a living room sofa. One of these days, she was really going to have to pull the cushions off of that thing and do some digging. She was bound to find a gold mine.

On her way back to the door, something caught Jane's eye. She turned to the blackboard. It was scrubbed clean at the end of each day with soap and water to remove residue. Maybe she was just a stickler for cleanliness, but Jane liked to have every edge and corner of the board spick and span at the end of each day. If it wasn't, she'd spend the next day checking for more chalk stains that she might have missed.

"Dammit, Darcy." Jane grabbed an eraser.

She held it over the already half removed words, pausing so her eyes could scan the disjointed letters. For some reason, she felt compelled to try and make it out.

"Nnnn-nnnuh," Jane furrowed her brow.

What remained of the message was 'N t ng r al.' Just silly class clown scribbling from the look of it. A single swipe of the eraser removed the offending words, and Jane put them far out of mind.

"I swear, I tell that girl every day to make sure the chalkboard is clean before she goes home," Jane muttered to herself.

"Student teacher problems?" Betty asked. It wasn't the first time Jane had complained about her new 'intern' of sorts. Darcy Lewis, while smart and passionate about learning, was hardly any better than the students half the time. How she expected to teach high school kids herself in a few years, Jane didn't know.

"Let's just say, you're lucky you weren't eligible for one."

Betty giggled, and Jane would've joined in were it not for the running man sliding into view. He stooped over to catch his breath. He must have sprinted all they way around the school to be this out of it.

"S-sorry to bother you, Ms. Foster," he said. He stood up straight, and he was wearing a student teacher sticker on the breast of his shirt. That figured. All the teachers and most of the students would know better than to run in the halls.

"Did you need something?" Jane asked.

He motioned to the left. "Principal Selvig wants to see you in his office."

"Right now? Why?"

"I don't know. I'm just delivering the message."

"Go on ahead, Jane," said Betty. She took backwards steps away. "I'd come with, but I have a giant stack of tests at home with my name on it."

"Okay, Betty, I'll call you later," said Jane.

"Right. And don't forget, we're still on for drinks next week."

"I know."

Jane thanked the student teacher and left him and Betty. She headed for the main office as he had designated and heard the back doors close as Betty left for the day. She wondered when it was that they'd decided to go out for drinks. She was going to have to try and sleep a more in the night and less in the day, because she couldn't remember it at all.

Erik's receptionist greeted Jane with a glance over her horn rimmed glasses and a momentary cease in typing.

"He's expecting you," she said.

Jane walked around the welcome desk to the door with Erik's name on it. She found him standing by window overlooking the parking lot. He told her once that he liked to look out on warm spring days like this one and reflect on his life, on the things he'd accomplished and the things he failed at. Jane couldn't imagine the latter category being longer than the former. Erik was the most successful person she had ever known.

"Hi, Erik," she said.

He turned around, his face breaking out in a grin.

"There you are," Erik said. He enveloped her in a big, bear hug. "I was starting to think I'd missed you."

"I had some extra work to finish," Jane said with a surreptitious glance at the floor. It was probably best not to let him know what she'd really been doing.

"Haha, that's good." He drew back to his desk, placing a hand on the oak wood and stroking it fondly. "I've just been having a moment alone in the old office. Only a few more weeks before I have to let it go."

"I still can't believe you're retiring," Jane said, shoulders sagging. "This place won't be the same without you."

"Ah, you'll be fine," said Erik. "I've had thirty five years in this place. I'm not looking for a thirty sixth. I need that time to catch up on some sleep and practice my golf swing. I might even try my hand at writing some books."

"Yeah, but I'm going to miss seeing you every day."

"Don't worry, Jane," he said. "In a few months, you won't even notice I'm gone."

Erik sat down, and Jane took that as her cue to follow suit.

"Anyway, the reason I wanted to see you is because the school board is sending the new principal down today to have a look around," he explained.

Jane's eyebrows shot up. "They picked him already?"

It was no secret, in spite of Erik's optimism for retired life, that his leaving had just as much to do with the superintendent wanting him out as it did Erik wanting out. She'd never ask, but she was pretty sure that stepping down years before he was legally a senior citizen never would've occurred to him if he hadn't been pushed so hard. She'd think it all she wanted, though.

"They want him to get an idea of how thinks work around here before he takes over. He'll be observing us for the rest of the week."

"And he's coming right now? That's pretty short notice."

"Apparently he wanted to get an early start," said Erik. "At least, that's what I was told."

There came a knock at the door. Jane watched Erik's face go from surprised to friendly in a tentative sort of way.

"Ah, speak of the devil," he said, motioning behind Jane. "Come on in, we were just talking about you."

Jane turned her head, and her breath caught in her throat. He was a little over six feet and slender, with slicked back black hair, green eyes, and a pale, handsome face. He didn't stand up straight; he had his hands in the pockets of his pants, leaning in an easygoing sort of way. The suit itself was fitted and casual, with the jacket left unbuttoned and the tie missing. Without it, Jane was forced to acknowledge the long lines of his neck above his collar, and how very nice they were.

"My apologies for being late," he said. "I had trouble finding my way."

"Yeah, we need to do something about that entranceway. I keep telling the board…" Erik grumbled for a few seconds more and then caught himself. He chortled. "But, I guess that's not my problem anymore, is it?"

"Indeed," said the man. He removed his hands from his pockets, and they were very nice, too. "I'll have to act in your place to see that the matter is rectified."

"You do that," said Erik, getting to his feet. He looked at Jane. "Jane, I'd like to introduce you to the new school principal. This is Mr.-"

"Loki, please," the man interrupted. "I prefer to go by my given name. I hope that's all right."

He held one hand out for Jane to shake, his mouth tugging upward to reveal very nice straight, white teeth. There were a lot of very nice things about him, though something about his demeanor had Jane thinking his personality wasn't one of them. Still, she felt an inexplicable pull to him and all of his better qualities. He was really far too attractive for someone she was going to be working under.

"That's fine," she said. "I'm Jane Foster, a science teacher."

"Really? I am a student of science myself," he said with a gleam in his eye that Jane couldn't place. "I'm sure we'll get along swimmingly."

He let go of her hand, which Jane had expected him to kiss along with her cheeks before doing the same to Erik. It must've been the accent. At the very least, it was nice to know that she was probably wrong about his character. He seemed like a perfectly likeable guy, and Jane had a really good feeling about him now that the awkwardness of their introductions had passed.

"Looks like you too will have a lot to talk about," Erik said, getting up. "Now, I need to go meet with the vice-principal. Would you mind showing Loki around, Jane?"

"Not at all," she said.

Jane and Loki left the office with a goodbye to Erik and a nod at the receptionist. Jane started the tour with the cafeteria. No one was there at this hour, but her stomach was growling and they usually had trail mix in the vending machine. While Jane fished through her pockets for spare change, Loki was examining the wide open space and the rows of rectangular tables. Luckily, the janitors had been through here already. The kind of messes the students left behind weren't bound to make a good first impression

"I like this place," Loki said.

"Yeah, and on Friday afternoons, they serve pizza," said Jane. She ripped open the bag and popped some peanuts into her mouth.

"I was referring more to the whole of it," Loki said. "I think it will serve me well."

That was a weird sort of way to talk about a new job. If Jane didn't know any better, she'd think he was going to use Genial North as the base for some kind of world domination plot. Wouldn't that be something else? If that was the case, he'd do better working at the private school five miles up the road. They had private parking lots and everything.

"Have I said something funny?"

Jane hadn't realized she was laughing at her own joke. Now that she did, she couldn't stop herself. She blamed it on him. He was far too blasé while scolding her. He was going to be her boss in a month and he'd just caught her daydreaming on the job, but there wasn't a hint of a harsh tone in his voice, and that was hilarious to her. Just another part of his charm, she supposed.

"No, it's nothing," she said. She met his eyes and kept staring, long after she should have stopped. He had a particularly hypnotic gaze and it didn't help that his eyes were his best feature. "I'm just kind of surprised how… _easy_  you are to talk to, if you don't mind me saying. I'm usually not this open with strangers. You sure we haven't met before?"

He looked up and out the window. It was a beautiful day and the sun was bright and golden. He seemed to like it a lot. His stance was one of calm and surety. It was a good look on him.

A smile crept up over his face, a look of contentment.

"In another time, maybe."

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this doesn't make the Ms. Foster series weird for anyone.
> 
> I've had this ending planned for over a year anyway. No point in changing it now, right?
> 
> Anyway, thanks again for sticking with this story, weird as it is. It's been a blast to write, even if it did take way too long to finish (ugh...).
> 
> Ciao!


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